


Under Shadow's Fall

by Winterstar



Series: The Pa'chen Experiment [1]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Addiction, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-30
Updated: 2011-05-30
Packaged: 2017-12-13 09:40:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 34,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/822833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterstar/pseuds/Winterstar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>SG1 visits the strange culture of Pa'chen, a world where Shadows roam. After they stumble upon questions and secrets, they are arrested and Daniel is condemned to the lowest rung of prison.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under Shadow's Fall

Title: Under Shadow’s Fall  
Author: Winterstar  
Category: Hurt/Comfort, Horror, Drama  
Rating: R  
Warnings: Disturbing images, violence, language

Disclaimer: Disclaimer: Stargate SG-1 and its characters are the property of Stargate (II) Productions, MGM/UA, Double Secret Productions, and Gekko Productions. This story is for entertainment purposes only and no money exchanged hands. No copyright infringement is intended. This is a parody for entertainment purposes only. The original characters, situations, and story are the property of the author. This story may not be posted anywhere without the consent of the author.

Excerpt from the Letter to the Governor of Pa’chen

……….he did not know of our ways and so has transgressed in a most egregious manner. Hence, I would put forth to your most Honored Governor that ignorance fueled his actions. 

Within you will find a missive of what has occurred. Is it an excuse? No it is but an explanation. This summary of sorts has been compiled from different sources to weave a complex pattern of what has come to be known as the Shayneal Incident. There are still questions to be answered but I would beg humbly that your most Respected Lord consider carefully (as it is known that your Honor is apt to do) the information and evidence supplied within these pages. Though it is not all conclusive, it is clear that the foreigners did not know of our ways or customs. They did not hold the same traditions or know the same righteous justice as is held so dearly within our own country.

Governor Seon-Lee dropped the paper and, as it fluttered to his polished desktop, he faltered in his resolve. What if? The question plagued him. What if Rai-Ayh was correct in her conclusions regarding the foreigners. Perhaps it was only a misunderstanding, a cultural difference. With some education the foreigners might be convinced of their erroneous and flagrantly dangerous ideas and ways. Seon-Lee frowned and crossed his massive arms over his broad chest, the silken robe of his office tugged across his frame to strain over thick muscles. Turning, he surveyed the square below outside his window. 

Even though a distance separated him from the outer court, Seon-Lee nodded with satisfaction. All was as it should be. He detected the Honored Order established so long ago by their venerable ancestors structure the very attitude of the city. From a far he could point out the Shadows from their demeanor, quiet, reserved, subservient. A chill crawled up his spine, caused the thrill of fear to race his heart. How could the foreigners not understand, not see the Shadows for the lower class, the lower, vile beings they were? 

Still, it was an interesting proposition put forth by their prisoner. Interesting and forbidden. Wrong. Yes, he nodded to himself. Rai-Ayh was wrong. He touched a raised index finger to his pursed lips. Yes, he must stay firm. Rai-Ayh, though a Master in her field of study, was wrong, her thinking and conclusions flawed. He had no other choice. Some would say he did, he could see that now. In years to come, they would question and criticize his decision but he needed to keep the peace, to keep the status quo. There were far too many Shadows to keep in line and far too little a police force to maintain their civilized society. Yes, Rai-Ayh must be made an example of, just as the foreigner had been. 

His assistant came into the office at his bidding. The razor thin man bowed briefly then awaited his final judgement. “Take Rai-Ayh to the Lower Square, strip her, burn her, and behead her.”

The assistant never flinched, never blinked. It was – after all – the accepted punishment for decadent thoughts and malicious behavior. Rai-ayh’s defense of the foreigners, especially Doctor Daniel Jackson, earned her the death sentence. He would make sure to stop by the Lower Square on the way home this evening to see her charred body. It would bring some contentment, but also some sorrow for he was not a man without conscience. Just as the sentence of Doctor Jackson had brought mix feelings of both elation and sadness. How could such brilliant people not understand how to govern the lower caste of the Shadows?

He picked a grape from the silver dish on his desk. Yes, he would go to the square tonight and look upon the death mask of Rai-Ayh then tomorrow he would call the Jajin Camp and check on the status of the foreigner Doctor Jackson. 

He did not envy the man, sentenced to life in the Jajin Camp in the lowest ring. And yet, Doctor Jackson did not suffer the worst fate -- that was reserved for his teammates. They were sentenced to the same prison camp but in the highest ring where they would be afford such luxuries as adequate food and water, shelter and warmth against the elements of nature. All things denied to their teammate. They were to watch the decline of their friend, observe without power Doctor Jackson’s slow deterioration. 

It would not be the lack of food, water or the necessities of life they would learn to fear but the very people their self-righteous teammate defended. The Shadows. 

The judgment was absolute. Doctor Daniel Jackson would live out his remaining days on the lowest ring of the Jajin Prison Camp – his government be damned. They would learn the truth of their interference. The good Doctor would suffer the company of his convictions. He would spend the rest of his life under the influence of the Shadows.

A quaver ran up his spine that was not wholly fear but was spiced with a savory pleasure. Tomorrow, he would plan to visit the prison camp and see for himself the decline of the good doctor, see the product of the Shadows’ freedom. For on the lowest level of the Jajin prison camp, there was no law, no rule to keep the Shadows under control. It was there they were allowed any vice, any freedom they so desired. His heart skipped a beat and he swallowed hard. It was almost arousing to think on it, to visualize the fate of Daniel Jackson.

He lips curled into a grin. Sometimes, some people should never be free.

Chapter 1: Five Weeks Ago

Excerpt from Doctor Daniel Jackson’s Field Notebook

……SG12 called SG1 in for negotiations on P6Q-228, known by the locals as Pa’chen. Interesting historical background – it is hypothesized that the Goa’uld who originally settled humans on this planet harvested from several different cultures, at several different times. The conglomeration of these cultures caused a mixture that does not quite work according to Doctor Ana Dupree. Not sure what she considers – ‘not working’. Currently the dominant culture seems to be Dynastic Chinese with underlying Medieval European influences.

……theory holds that the Goa’uld has been identified as Nirriti. Her underground laboratory was discovered by the locals some time ago and they are willing to work with us on investigating it. Further reports indicate an alloy of unknown substance/elements was discovered in the lab (Sam can’t wait to get her hands on it). Due to this discovery and our increased interest, the locals are insisting on more in-depth negotiations and a formalized agreement. Ana asked General Hammond for SG1’s assistance due to the difficulties with cultural barriers and definitions. We embark at seven hundred hours.

Ana danced when she talked, her whole body bubbled with enthusiasm about the subject – whatever the subject was from the minor details of her favorite television show to the intricate patterns on a vase found at a dig. But now, as Daniel Jackson studied her, that dance, that excitement born of a never ending curiosity revolving about life, he discerned a deflation of sorts. She talked, lecturing on the Pa’chen but there was something missing. 

In the rooms offered to them by the government of the province, she briefed them on the current state of the negotiations. Daniel glanced at his team mates. Sam stayed focused, her eyes never wavering from the speaker. Teal’c remained impassive, seemingly unmoved by the subject while Jack rolled his pencil back and forth on the table, barely catching it each time before it edged to the rim of the table. As he considered whether to tell Jack to please listen, Ana concluded her talk.

“I suggest you take the Kal’ja road to the laboratory. It is the easiest road and you won’t have to meet any of the Shadows along the way.”

“Sounds good, when do we leave?” Jack caught the pencil again.

“Wa- wait, wait, why don’t we want to meet the Shadows?” Daniel asked.

“Now Daniel, have you never seen Peter Pan, don’t you know anything about wayward Shadows?” 

“Jack.”

“Daniel.”

“Sir, I’d like to know as well. Shadows, Ana?” Sam leaned forward in her seat; it looked to Daniel that her eagerness to understand and learn would launch her out of the chair.

Jack only raised his scarred eyebrow at Daniel and then waved Ana to continue. She nodded, swallowed once and said, “The society is separated into two distinct groups. I’m not, well, I can’t say they are two different races, but maybe they are. I just, anyway.”

Daniel frowned. This wasn’t like Ana at all, she was never unsure. She wasn’t a know it all but she was a confident scientist. Her actions, her mannerisms likened her to a first year graduate student. “Ana?”

Her eyes dropped and she shook her head. “Just.” She stopped again. “Daniel, there are two classes. Those called the Lay and those called the Shadows. I’m not certain where the names come from but the Lay are most definitely the ruling class with powers over the Shadows. The Shadows are subservient in nearly everyway. When we walk through the city square you’ll see that they walk behind the Lay, they walk bent over, nearly hunched. They never look a Lay in the eye. They bow to the Lay.”

Jack scrutinized her and asked, “Nearly everyway?”

Daniel almost smiled but held it back. Jack was not as stupid as he pretended to be. You didn’t get to be a full bird Colonel in the Air Force being an idiot.

“Yes, Colonel. The Shadows are subservient to the Lay in nearly everyway.”

“But,” he said and opened up his hands to urge her to explain.

Biting her lower lip, she shook her head then answered, “You see, it is difficult to explain. When we first came here to start the negotiations, the Governor had two Shadows assigned to us.”

“You agreed to this?”

“It is an accepted cultural practice, Doctor Jackson.”

“I understand that, but we are talking about slavery here.” He hadn’t been silent about his disgust with the fact his government was willing to do business with the Pa’chen when it was obvious a large segment of their society was of a lower caste with different and decreased rights and privileges.

“Not really, Daniel.”

“Not really?” Daniel gave a small laugh. “Don’t tell me this is a separate but equal deal because that doesn’t cut it either.”

“No, I am not saying that.” Her face flushed and her lips pinched tight. “What I am saying is that the Shadows voluntarily stay in a subservient position.”

“Why would they do that, Ana?” Sam asked and he recognized her attempt to defuse what she saw as a potent situation.

“Not sure, I couldn’t figure it out at first but I think it has something to do with what the Shadows are.” 

“Are not the Shadows simply another of the different races brought here by Nirriti?”

“That’s what we theorize, yes. But there is something different about them. They don’t seem quite human.” She coughed and looked to the window. Daniel caught a glimmer in her eye as if she held back tears.

“Ana?” He reached for her but she shied back. So unlike her, it sent a chill up his spine. Her eyes focused away from them, far away seeing something none of them were privy to.

“You just don’t want to meet them. Don’t accept any servants, just don’t.” Ana gathered up her papers, ignoring Jack’s attempts to lighten her mood, Sam’s persistent questions even Teal’c quiet statements of support. She excused herself with a quick comment about being tired. She went to her room closing them off from her fears.

“What was that about?” Sam asked, staring at the engraved dark wooden door.

“Perhaps Doctor Ana Dupree feels a helpless and must be recommended for psychological counseling,” Teal’c stated.

“Someone remind me to make sure Teal’c doesn’t watch anymore Oprah.” Jack turned to Daniel and asked, “Any ideas?”

“Ana’s report didn’t really hint at any problems or issues. It was slightly disturbing that she didn’t comment on what really is a system of slavery or at the least apartheid.” He pulled open his pack and dug through it to find his field notebook. “That in and of itself is saying something.”

“Humor me Daniel.”

“As an anthropologist one of the cardinal rules is that you are observing the cultural, learning it but not judging it.”

“Kind of like the prime directive.”

“The Prime what?” 

Jack rolled his eyes and said, “Really, Daniel, how can you be an anthropologist and not even know your own culture.”

“Is not the Prime Directive a rule of the television show Star Trek, O’Neill.”

“Give the Jaffa a gold star, he got it in one.”

“Really Jack, I hardly see how that is relevant to the current discussion,” Daniel said but before Jack could refute him, he added, “While anthropologists don’t judge, they make comments and compare the evolution of thought with respect to the human condition. Ana said nothing about the slavery issue just stated it and at one point even referred to it as a much needed cultural device.”

Sam perked up at this last bit of information. “Cultural device?”

Daniel raised an index finger then put it to his lower lip as if to quiet her. He flipped his notebook open and read. “A quote from Ana’s report: ‘The dominant-subservient class system works as a check and balance on Pa’chen. Without this system, disorder, lawlessness and even chaos might ensue.’ End-quote.” He fell into silence, once again contemplating the page trying to make sense out of Ana’s support of what he thought of as a corruption of any society’s standards. While as an anthropologist, he reframed from criticizing other cultures based on his own cultural biases, he did find it difficult to rationalize slavery as an imperative device needed to maintain a society. Arguments such as these were used in the 1800s to justify slavery in the old South. There were limitations to his unbiased observation.

“Ana believed that the master-slave system was necessary here?” Sam let out a sigh, releasing the tension he could see vibrating through her frame. “Did Ana say why she believed it was necessary?”

“Ack!” Jack rose from the chair, nearly toppling it in his haste. “Major, what is our mission here?”

“To secure rights to investigate the laboratory left by Nirriti,” she said. “And to secure rights to the new alloy discovered on Pa’chen.”

“Very good Major.” Jack turned and glared at him. “Now while this Prime Directive stuff is all very interesting, I don’t see how it fits into our plan.”

“But it does, Jack. You have to understand a society and its rules before you can” A clatter then a crash interrupted him but before he could react, Jack and Teal’c jumped up and raced to Ana’s door.

“Doctor Ana Dupree have you injured yourself?”

“Open up,” Jack banged on the door. “That’s an order.”

Daniel, with Sam in tow, joined his team mates at the door but raised a hand to forestall Jack. “She’s not military and she’s not under your command.”

“You’re wrong, Daniel. She is under my command since I’m the senior military officer in both SG1 and SG12. And for your education, and listen here Daniel, when we’re off world, I consider all SG personnel military. God help me, even you.” He turned to the door and yelled, “Ana let us in now.”

When no answer was forthcoming, Jack gestured to Teal’c and moved out of the way. The Jaffa shouldered the door and it swung open swinging loose on its hinges. 

“Oh God,” Sam gasped as they rushed forward into the room. Dangling from the ornamental rafters of the peaked ceiling, Ana hung from a rope her face mottling to blue hues. 

“Goddamn it,” Jack cursed as he raced to catch her limp legs. “Teal’c.” He nodded and the warrior, with an agility belied by his muscular form, leapt to the large desk Ana had evidently used to step off of into oblivion. Teal’c wrapped his arms around the woman as Daniel followed him. He reached up, barely able to extend far enough to use his knife to slice the rope, and released Ana. Her body slumped into Teal’c arms, unresponsive and broken. 

Teal’c managed to struggle down from the desk avoiding the shattered vases and upturned chair scattered on the floor. Gently, he laid his burden down on the divan as Jack called to Sam to get help. She disappeared without a sound. 

“Why would she do this? Why?” Jack demanded and he suddenly realized he was being asked, interrogated for a reason. The colonel’s hands traveled over the inert face, to the clearly fractured neck. “Christ, why, Daniel, why would she do this?”

“Jack, I don’t,” he began and leaned forward. Jack slapped him away. 

“You sent an unfit scientist on a mission.”

“I never did.” This was not the time for blame and not the time to analyze why Ana had tried – no – committed suicide.

“She was in your department, Daniel. If she had issues, why the hell didn’t you tell someone? Why did you let her be assigned to a team?”

“O’Neill, I do not believe that Daniel Jackson acted in such a manner. I believe he is as shocked as the rest of us regarding this turn of events.” Teal’c placed a hand on Jack’s shoulder. “Perhaps we should discuss the reasons at a more appropriate time. Perhaps we might reflect upon Ana Dupree and her words of warning.”

Daniel could visually see Jack deflate, could make out the tension leaving the etched lines of his friend’s face. For a brief moment, Jack looked old, tired, too worn and too stained to go on but the expression shifted and the hardened colonel returned. 

It was then Daniel first met a Shadow. From the corner of the room, near the shaded arched windows and hidden behind the ceiling to floor carved wooden bookcases, he emerged. Daniel had to blink once to make out the crouched form as the man crawled from his hiding place. His wan almost gray face melted into the dark cast by the shadows of the room. He wore a long gray white robe; though it looked clean the color of the robe made it looked soiled, filthy. His long fingers probed the side of the bookcase, seemed to creep as he slide across the room to the doorway.

Teal’c was up before Jack could mouth a command. A howl issued from the man as Teal’c grabbed his collar and shoved him before the colonel.

“It is only the I, it is only the I,” the man whimpered and fell to his face on the floor before Jack.

“Yes and who the hell would that be?” 

Daniel recognized the inner war reflected on Jack’s face. His friend wanted to pound something, someone – Daniel had just escaped that fate thanks to Teal’c – and the Shadow presented the perfect opportunity. Placing his arm in front of Jack, Daniel leaned down and reached for the long fingers. They felt cool, like a reptile’s claws. He stifled his want to flinch and said, “Who are you and what are you doing here?”

“Only the I, only the I. The Miss Ana is she to be well? Is she to be well?” The broken language and his quaking body signaled fear but Daniel was not sure it was due to guilt.

Forgetting the need to find out the identity of the Shadow, he asked, “Why were you in Ana’s room?” Daniel noted the door to the outer corridor was slightly ajar, indicating the man must have entered through that door and not the door to the common room.

“The Miss Ana called out. Wanted me to attend her. The I came to attend.”

Giving Daniel a soft shove, Jack took over the questioning. “Did you do this to her?”

“The I came to attend. The I came as called. The I never touched the Miss Ana. The Miss Ana was kind to the I.” The man cried out then screamed as if Jack had stabbed him with a knife.

“Shit, what the hell was that for?” 

“The I cries the death cry for his master.”

“Listen, Ana wasn’t anyone’s master.”

“No, no.” The Shadow threw himself onto his back and his eyes rolled up in his head. His body shook in a violent tremor, his long fingers scraping at the air as his back arched, his toes splayed and curled.

Daniel dropped to his knees and, reaching to calm the man, touched his chest. 

“Is he having some kind of weird ass fit?” Jack asked.

At that moment, the man seized Daniel’s shirt and jerked him forward, forcing him down. “The I needs a master, the I begs you to be the master.” Spittle sprayed over his face and Daniel tried to yank away from the man’s grasp.

“Hey get off him.” Jack gripped the man’s hand, trying to uncurl the fingers from Daniel’s collar.

“No,” Daniel coughed as he stretched out the neck of the shirt. The fabric cut into his flesh, the twisted collar felt like a rope. The recent glimpse of Ana’s mutilated neck flashed before his eyes as he grappled to free himself. “Let me go, let.” His voice cracked into a cough as both Teal’c and Jack wrestled with the Shadow to free him.

“The I will take you as master, as the master.” His words were garbled with fury and fear, his hand tightening their grip. “The I needs a master.”

“Get the hell off him.” Jack switched tactics then and clutched his shirt shredding it but the collar remained intact and thus the noose still remained. “Teal’c, hit him. Get the Goddamned thing off Daniel.”

“That will not be necessary.” A voice echoed in the room. “Shayde-un, please stop.”

The man sobbed, a shiver ran the length of his body but his grip relaxed and Daniel was able to remove the hands from his throat. He coughed and fell back onto the floor. A slight ringing reverberated in his ears and the room tilted as a wave of dizziness swam over him. 

“Daniel?” Sam knelt beside him, her arm around him as Jack rose to confront their visitor. He squeezed his eyes shut and an image flickered briefly before him. Sam’s eyes were no longer blue but the darkest sweetest brown, her hair no longer the color of sunshine but the darkest sweetest brown with long tendrils of curls. Her full lips curved into a smile and he saw her, touched her for the first time in years. Sha’re. 

He murmured her name and then the world collapsed, fell, fractured. Her face split into a thousand shards and all pierced him through. He heard them calling, heard Sha’re laughing as she divided into a million wounding blades but he could not answer. His hands felt heavy and useless, his eyes stung and his mouth opened to gulp the air yet nothing sounded. He crumpled to the floor, remembering only his dead wife’s face as she sliced him through.

Chapter 2

Excerpt from the Provincial interrogation of Colonel Jack O’Neill (draft copy):

……At that time, we didn’t have a clue what the order of business on Pa’chen was. We knew about the Lay and the Shadows. We didn’t know about any Honored Order.’

Interrogator no.1: ‘But you persisted in your actions, you did not consider the value of the Pa’chen society, nor it’s Honored Order.’

Prisoner: ‘I told you before, we had no idea what would happen. I can’t order someone not to think about what is right and what is wrong.’

Interrogator no.1: ‘Based on your culture’s ideas of what is right or wrong, not ours.’

Prisoner: ‘Based on basic human dignity. How the hell we were supposed to know the Shadows weren’t exactly human?’

Interrogator no.1: ‘We told you, but you didn’t listen. You came in here and made conclusions, conclusions based on your idea of what is right and what is wrong.’ 

Prisoner: No response

Interrogator no.1: ‘Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?’

Interrogator no.2 swings a crushing blow to the prisoner’s face breaking his nose. Interrogator no.1 gives the prisoner a moment to compose himself.

Prisoner: ‘What do you want me to say? There isn’t anyway I can make it better. It was my decision, my call. Let the rest of my team go.’

Interrogator: ‘Your team will suffer the consequences of their actions, especially Doctor Jackson.’

The lines on the governor’s face remained impassive, unmoved as Jack invaded the bastard’s personal space. He didn’t give a shit whether or not the governor was the de facto leader of the known world on Pa’chen. All he knew was that he had one man down and another unconscious all within an hour of stepping on this forsaken planet.

“You want to tell me what the hell is going on here?” 

“Sir,” Carter said her tone a bit too reprimanding. When he turned to glare at her, she shied back and placed her hand on Daniel’s shoulder. He could tell the archeologist’s breathing was regular but it was the fine sheen of sweat covering his brow that Jack didn’t like.

He’d been on this planet a whole two hours, just met the governor and already he didn’t like the bastard. Didn’t like how he stood with his arms folded and closed up. Didn’t like how his eyes slitted and seemed to look above and below Jack, but never precisely at him, didn’t like that he didn’t seem at all moved by the scene before him.

“Shayde-un come,” the governor said, ignoring Jack’s demands. The man or whatever the hell he was scuttled over to the governor’s side, his movements more like a frightened ratty dog than a human. He pawed at the governor and even whimpered as he murmured over and over again about needing a master. Jack swallowed down the bile as the Shadow actually salivated when he glanced at Daniel.

“You’re the one in charge, right?”

The governor narrowed his eyes and only nodded. He still hadn’t addressed Jack at all. 

“Well, we are guests or I thought we were guests of your government and my people have been attacked. I have one very dead scientist and another unconscious scientist. You better damn well explain what the hell is going on.”

“Colonel,” Carter said as she helped a barely conscious Daniel to his feet. He swayed for a second, squeezed his eyes closed as he steadied himself with a hand on Carter’s shoulder.

“Jack, Jack,” Daniel said in a soft voice as if the jarring tones of his own voice might wreck his tenuous hold on consciousness. He reached out with one hand as Daniel does to calm the situation and to take over as lead negotiator. Before Jack refused him, Daniel turned to the governor and said, “Honored Governor Seon-Lee, we are agreeable to make your acquaintance.”

The artificial pattern of the formalized address grated like a too starched uniform over his skin. Yet he bit back the words, stilled the need to swing his fists and awaited the outcome of Daniel’s interplay with the official.

To his surprise, the governor gave a short bow to Daniel as he patted the Shadow on the head. “It is with our arms open and wide we welcome you to Pa’chen. The Shadows of our House are at your disposal.”

“Most honored Governor we thank you for this offering but it will not be necessary.” Daniel glanced back at Ana, her face growing blue and rigid in its repose. “We would be obliged if you or your staff might help us to understand what has occurred here.”

The governor’s face never cracked, his features never wavered from the stone etched structure constructing the man. He did spare a quick look at the dead woman and then answered, “There is nothing to tell.” Jack noted that he lapsed from the formalized speech pattern. “As I understand it from your Major Carter, your scientist killed herself. I wonder at a people that would permit such a fragile mind to wander onto other planets.” He paused as he examined each one of them. A chill rose the hair on Jack’s neck and he noticed even Teal’c shifted uneasily in his stance.

“Excuse me, most Honored Governor,” Daniel began.

Give it a break, Jack thought, if he isn’t going to be formal with you –why the hell bother, Daniel?

“We only ask to understand Doctor Dupree’s state of mind as you and your staff observed it over the last few weeks so that we may be better suited to comprehend why she would take her life.” At this last, Jack realized Daniel was not actually looking at the governor but his gaze drifted to the man crouched on the floor, the man absently stroking the hem of the silken robe of the governor.

Seon-Lee gave a look that Jack could only describe as a look one would give to a petulant child. Benevolent tolerance. He’d given that same look to Charlie, even to some of the troops under his command. It meant you’re wrong but you are so naïve and stupid I will forgive you. Jack cursed and made to jump into the conversation, to rip that smug grin off the governor’s polished face.

“We believe that Doctor Dupree may have been affected by something in her environment since there had been no warning before she departed from our world that she meant harm to herself,” Daniel was saying. His words seemed to drift, to babble to Jack’s ears and, instead of interrupting him, Jack stared at his friend. A light sheen of sweat covered Daniel’s forehead and his wan coloring set off all kinds of alarms in Jack’s head.

“Surely, you are not implying something here would harm the good doctor?” He stroked the head of the creature at his foot. Jack offered the cowering form a glance and a shiver inched up his spine. Somehow, someway it wasn’t quite human. 

“Please, most Honored Governor,” Daniel started.

“No, Daniel.” Jack gave him a gentle push while nodding to his second in command. Carter tugged Daniel away from the leader of the province to a cushioned seat. The archeologist fell into the chair as if his bones were loose at the joints. “Teal’c, I want you to take Dupree back to the SGC, report what happened to Hammond. I want an autopsy done, and have Fraiser send the results back here yesterday.” Before Teal’c could report to Jack that it was impossible to comply with the stated timeline, he said, “I don’t care how impossible it is, just do it.”

“As you wish,” Teal’c said in his most respectful voice. The boiling tension radiating off of Jack heated the room to unbearable levels, even for a Jaffa. Teal’c hoisted the small woman onto his shoulders, nodded to his team leader and pushed Seon-Lee aside to exit the room.

Folding his arms, Jack stared at the governor. “If you don’t mind, we would like some privacy before the negotiations meetings.”

Seon-Lee feigned a smile as he touched the crown of the Shadow’s head. “Of course, my good Colonel. It is understood that you will need some time to recover from your great loss. Please take what time you need. Shayde-un will be at your service.”

“The I would do it, the I would do it,” Shayde nodded as spittle dripped from his mouth onto his chin. He scampered over to Carter, raised a hand as if he might paw her but she backed away from him. 

“Sir,” she said nothing else; she needed to say nothing else.

“This Shadow guy won’t be necessary.”

Seon-Lee tilted his head and then looked down to Daniel. “Oh, but I am afraid it is.” 

Chapter 3

Excerpt from Doctor Daniel Jackson’s Field Notebook

…..Jack was unable to convince Seon-Lee that we did not require the presence of a Shadow. The governor announced we would have approximately twelve hours before the negotiations would begin. More than enough time, in his mind, to grieve our loss. How can anyone put a time limit on grief? Ana was a good kid, young, enthusiastic, bold – maybe a little too bold – and infinitely kind. She brought me lilies once, to help me through Sha’re’s death. She told me to plant them and every year when they bloomed they would be a living memorial of my Sha’re. Did Ana have anyone? Will anyone mourn her? Who should I buy lilies for?

I’ve observed the Shadow’s interaction with our team and, overall, it seems harmless enough. He acts like a servant, fetching things, making tea, opening and closing the shutters on the slightest clue that the light is wrong in the room. Even when he walks upright, though, his whole demeanor seems to crawl, slither like some viper. I cannot help but cringe when he is around. I’ve chided myself for literally feeling uncomfortable in the presence of the man. I shouldn’t. He is a man, isn’t he? It must be this environment, this culture. I’ve always respected others’ cultures – even to the detriment to my character and how the team views me – but how can I support a culture that literally turns people into some kind of sub-human form?

“Daniel, I told you we’re not getting involved,” Jack stated, the corners of his mouth turned down, his eyes slit to ridged lines. “We’re here for one thing and one thing only. We get the negotiations done, and we get out of Dodge.”

“Don’t you even care what happened to Ana?” Daniel paced the common room of their suite. His agitation growing as he moved across the intricately woven carpet. The patterns made him dizzy, the pacing spurred the nausea. “It might have been a cry for help.”

“Well, we can’t help her now, can we?”

“Sir,” Sam said but then pursed her lips to silence when Jack glowered at her reprimand.

“I know that, Jack,” Daniel said not trying to hide the sarcastic tone. “I’m not talking about Ana, I’m talking about them.” He indicated the Shadow lurking in the corner of the room. His form curved and somehow flattened at the same time. He couldn’t wrap his head around how the man could become so one dimensional in a physical sense and yet not.

Jack gave a quick glance at the man hovering in the corner, grimaced and then shook his head. “We aren’t here for that, Daniel. For all we know he is a spy.”

“I know we aren’t for that. We’re not going to do anything about a culture that obviously treats a large segment of their population as less than human.”

“Have you seen these Shadows lately?”

“It doesn’t matter. I still think that something about this situation led Ana to take her own life. She wasn’t some fragile, off kilter psychological case.” 

Sam stood to the side, her back to both Daniel and Jack. He couldn’t tell if she was listening to their conversation or watching the square below their suite. 

“So you’re telling me in order to find out what the hell is going on here, we’re going to have to delve into this creepy Shadow thingy?”

He frowned. “Something like that.”

Jack considered his request, looking first to the back of his second in command and then to Teal’c as the Jaffa stood sentinel duty near the main door to the rooms. His attention then turned toward Shayde-un. The man cowered further into the shade of the corner of the room.

“Carter?”

She turned, her expression pensive, worried. “Sir?”

“Did the governor give you any ideas about this set up? About the Shadows?”

Leaving the window, Sam shook her head. “No, sir. He didn’t seem disturbed by the situation at all.” But her words turned to Daniel instead. “Perhaps we should talk with-.” She stopped, bit her lip and lifted her chin to the Shadow.

“Maybe,” Daniel walked over to the man. “Would you mind answering some questions?”

As Daniel bent down over him, the Shadow peered up. His eyes glossed and clouded. A chill pricked Daniel’s skin, scraping his nerves. Shayde-un eyes cleared and, with hands clawing the carpet, he crawled out of the corner. “The I will do as you need, the I wants to do as you need.”

Jack rifled a hand through his hair as Daniel led the servant to a chair. “Daniel, I really think we’re wasting time here. Maybe we should get another one. He seems a little, well not the sharpest tool in the shed.”

Daniel raised his hand, nodding but not looking at Jack. “Just let me try, okay?”  
Jack remained silent but moved closer to him. “Shayde-un, how long have you been in the service of the governor.”

“The I is not in the service of the governor.”

Jack folded his arms and cocked a scarred eyebrow at Daniel. 

“You’re not?”

“The I and the others take the masters but are not in the service of the masters.”

“Doesn’t make much sense,” Jack murmured. “Like I said, not the sharpest tool in the shed.” 

“What do you mean? Shayde-un, are you free to come and go without your masters?” Daniel asked.

The man twisted around to throw himself face first on the floor. He groaned into the carpet. “The I would never come and go. The I knows what the Freedom is, the I knows the master keeps the I safe from the Freedom.”

“Shayde?” Daniel knelt, placing his hand on the Shadow’s shoulder. A clammy cool moisture seeped through the man’s clothes. The urge to yank his hand back crept over him but he resisted and said, “Why would you need to be safe from freedom?”

“The I knows it is a curse. Only the cursed, the unclean of the Shadows are to be burdened with the Freedom. Only in the lowest ring of the Jajin prison do they suffer it.” Shayde-un hid his face again, crying into the carpet. “Please, the I will do anything; please, be the I’s master.”

Daniel backed away from him, an unease growing in his chest. He coughed once as a suffocating grip tightened around his ribs, squeezing his lungs. Stuttering, he addressed Jack, “Do you, do you think it’s some kind, some kind of mass brainwash-washing?”

“Daniel?” Sam asked. He reached out for her, his hand bumping her shoulder but not finding purchase. Dropping, falling away, Daniel staggered to his knees as his breath escaped. “Daniel.”

Sam grabbed hold of him as Jack spun around and confronted the Shadow. “What the hell around you doing?” He lurched toward the man, but Daniel’s strangulated cry halted him. 

The world closed and narrowed about Daniel, his vision at once brightening to painful brilliance and darkening to the absolute void. He mouthed words but only gulps came out. Sam was holding his face, kneeling with him, talking to him. Her words washed away like the rush of the river rapids before a waterfall. He heard nothing, yet in the distance he discerned it. In the distance that was too close, he made out the noises, the heartbeat, the breathing and then the laughter. The laughter cracked the air like whip, cutting it in two. He hauled in a breath but nothing came, his lungs shrunk within him, withered and decayed.

“Daniel, listen to me,” Sam screamed. He heard her words but they did not register. “Listen to me, breathe, Daniel. Breathe.”

A distinct crack shattered the air about him, and the hold on his lungs snapped as he tumbled to the floor with only Teal’c strong hands on him breaking his fall. His eyes watered and his lungs strained as if he struggled for breath in a smoke filled room.

Sam hunched over him as Teal’c raised his head to offer him water. He coughed and sputtered. In the far corner of the room, Daniel glimpsed the Shadow weeping as he cradled his face and bloody nose. It was then Daniel realized what had happened. He fumbled as he clambered to his feet, Teal’c steadying him. 

Standing at the wide window, Jack fisted his hands over and again at his sides. He caught the red smear of blood staining his knuckles and looked over to the Shadow once again. “Jack.”

“Don’t, Daniel. Don’t.” A shudder rolled over Jack’s shoulders and for a moment Daniel was certain he witnessed his friend fight to maintain control over a baser instinct, an instinct he’d shed long ago. After a moment’s pause as silence gripped the room, Jack turned around. His demeanor radiated cold and efficiency. “Carter, check in with Hammond and asked him how much we really need to look at this lab and the mineral. I want to know if we can get out of here or not.”

Sam gave Daniel a sidelong look and then turned back to her CO. “But, sir.”

“No buts. I don’t like this place. Get Hammond on the horn and find out if we have to stay in Oz or not.” 

Sam only nodded then left the room. Before he could speak, Jack raised his hand and commented, “No arguments. I don’t want to hear about the culture or any of that crap.”

He said nothing.

“Daniel?” Jack took a step toward him and he felt Teal’c grip tighten. “What is it?”

As he tumbled to the floor and the world began to gray out, his sight strayed to the man in the corner, in the shadows. He was no longer weeping. He was laughing. 

Chapter 4

Excerpt from the Provincial interrogation of Major Samantha Carter (draft copy):

……You must understand, it won’t be pleasant for you. The Jajin Prison is not pleasant for any woman regardless of what level you are assigned.’

Prisoner: ‘Is that supposed to frighten me?’

Interrogator no. 1: ‘I am only trying to make you understand, Major Carter, as one woman to another. I am trying to help you.’

Prisoner: ‘I would hardly call beating my CO senseless trying to help me.’

Interrogator no. 1: ‘If your CO and the rest of your team would cooperate then we wouldn’t need to resort to these methods.’

Prisoner: ‘It would help to know what you wanted from us.’

Interrogator no. 2: ‘That’s better. Progress, I like that.’

Interrogator no. 1: ‘We need you to convince Doctor Jackson that our system of governance is acceptable. He’s infected the whole of the Shadow community with his leftist beliefs.’

Prisoner: ‘I don’t think I’ll be able to convince Daniel that slavery is acceptable or that Freedom is a leftist belief. You’re asking us to do something against our own cultural mores.’

Interrogator no 2: ‘That’s enough. Strip her and hose her.’

Interrogator no. 1 rips the clothes off of the shackled prisoner and blasts her with a water hose. After several minutes of pelting her with the flood of water, the Interrogator turns off the stream. The Prisoner slumps in her bindings.

Interrogator no. 2: ‘This will seem like a picnic when you think back on it during your stay at the Jajin prison.’

Prisoner: ‘Fuck you.’

Interrogator no. 2: ‘Blast her again.’

Her commanding officer stood over the Cultural Liaison and barked questions about the Shadows and what the hell was going on. For her part, the Cultural Liaison bowed her head and with meek doe like eyes continued to accept the berating with understanding tolerance.

“It is with much regret we hear the news of Doctor Dupree’s demise, Colonel O’Neill,” Rai-ayh said and shuffled over to the tea cart. “Please, I know you must look for answers, but now is not the time to seek them.”

Sam glanced at the Colonel, recognized the seething boil flushing his skin and grimaced. Hammond had ordered them to stay planetside while he went through the chain of command back on Earth. There was considerable pressure from several different committees, the Joint Chiefs and the President to explore the laboratory found on Pa’chen and to get mineral rights. The death of an unstable scientist (she had to be unstable if she commited suicide according to the Senate committee) and the illness of Doctor Daniel Jackson did not warrant an immediate withdrawal from the negotiations, nor did it necessitate any back-up units of any kind, not even a medical unit. It was well known that Doctor Jackson suffered from migraines. Sam could say the Colonel did not take the news very well.

His current tack of intimidation of the Cultural Liaison did not seem to be working, and her attention drifted over to Daniel. The linguist lay in a heap, curled in on himself on a low cushioned pad on the floor. His arms were wrapped around his mid-section and his eyes were shuttered but he frowned as if in pain. Teal’c reported to her that their teammate remained unconscious for the last hour. She believed it was a good excuse to go back and try the General again, but unfortunately when she did, he was not available. He had been called away and would not return to the Mountain until evening Earthside. She calculated that to be about twelve hours. Sam knew the colonel was on the precipice, teetering, and about to defy a direct order and bring Daniel home. But it was at that moment, Daniel chose to wake up.

“What?” He reached out a hand, pawing the pad and blinking against the glare in the room. 

She knelt on the pad and nodded to Teal’c. The warrior kept his hand on Daniel’s chest, preventing him from moving. “Daniel, how do you feel?”

“Where? Where are we?” He squinted and she handed him his glasses.

“You collapsed. You had some trouble breathing and then collapsed.” She touched his forehead and noted he was cool but clammy. “How do you feel?”

“I don’t remember anything. Where are we?” He surveyed the room, and she saw his eyes bounce around to inventory certain key objects in the room. The colonel had stopped talking with Rai-Ayh and had turned to their fallen colleague. Daniel’s gaze did not stop on their leader but instead dropped to Shayde-un. 

A shiver ran up her spine as she watched Daniel crawl over to the Shadow on all fours, his gait unsteady and broken like a crippled child. Once he locked eyes on the Shadow, Daniel’s focus never left him. As if to cradle a hurt child, Daniel reached over to the Shadow and clasped the thin creature in his arms. She cringed as she witnessed his tenderness and caring. Inwardly, she chided herself for her repulsion of the creature – human – thing. 

Swallowing hard against the bile burning her throat, Sam asked, “Daniel?”

He looked up at her, eyes imploring and wide. “Sam, it’s okay now. I think we should ask to go see the lab.” 

She pursed her lips, and she tried to gauge his state of well being. The creature like some wounded puppy cuddled into Daniel’s open arms. “Are you sure, Daniel?”

The Colonel stepped in front of her, blocking her visual examination of her team mate. “Hell, Daniel, we’re not going anywhere. That thing attacked you and you were out of it. I want some answers before we go exploring the great frontier here.”

Daniel smiled, a slow, tentative smile. He stood, his balance unsure he used the ornately carved chair as a brace. “Jack, we need to get to the laboratory. I think it holds the key to what is going on here, and-.” He stopped, his thick eyebrows furrowed as if he listened to an internal conversation. “The key, yes.”

“What?” The Colonel turned to her. “Carter, you sure he didn’t hit his head?”

Daniel straightened his shoulders, his hand on the head of the creature. He slipped fingers under his glasses and pinched his nose. “Really, Jack, I’m fine. I think some of the flowers might be causing my allergies to act up, or something.”

“Or something,” the Colonel said. He folded his arms. “Daniel, never shit a shitter.”

“Jack.”

“Daniel.”

“Jack, just,” Daniel sighed. “Let’s just get to the laboratory.” Daniel turned to Rai-ayh. 

The petite woman had been standing in the corner of the room. Her eyes never drifted to the Shadow. Sam noted how all the Lay easily ignored the presence of the Shadows. To them Shadows were simply like the furniture, there for their utility and nothing more. 

“Do you think it would be possible for us to go to the laboratory today?”

“Not today Daniel, tomorrow morning. You look like hell.”

Daniel paused, his lips bunched up but he did not protest. Through clinched teeth, he said, “Fine.” He scanned their faces, then said, “I’m getting some sleep. Shayde-un.”

“The I comes, the I comes.” It slunk beside Daniel.

“Whoa, whoa,” Jack said and stepped in front of Daniel. Sam wasn’t far behind as she blocked his path to his bedroom.

“Daniel, what are you doing?”

Daniel glanced at Rai-ayh. She never betrayed him, did not react. “The Shadow needs a-.” He raised his fingers to emphasize the quotes. “A ‘master’ and I would like to discuss with Shayde-un exactly what this means. In other words, Sam, I would like to do my job.”

A rush of heat raced to her cheeks. “Of course, sure.” She nodded. 

Daniel disappeared into the inner bedrooms of their suite, the Shadow trailing behind him. 

“He’s lying,” she commented, ignoring the fact that Rai-ayh was still in the room.

“Yeah, I know.”

“Colonel?” If he knew, why wasn’t he stopping Daniel from whatever he planned with that creature.

“The question is why, Carter, why?” The Colonel turned to Rai-ayh awaiting an answer.

Rai-ayh curled her hands into the sleeves of her long robe. She bowed her head and in whispered tones, said, “Our society prevents the Shadows from surviving without a master.” She smiled, the gesture sincere but pained. “There is no way for Shayde-un to consider any other way to live. Those who have, now live in the lowest level of the Jajin prison camp.”

“Yeah, we’ve heard that one before,” The Colonel glared at Rai-ayh, but the tiny woman never faltered. 

“It is our way, sir. There is no other way.” She gave a weak nod. “I will prepare for your journey to the laboratory tomorrow at first day rise.” She bowed and left the suite.

“Peachy, just peachy.” The Colonel turned to her. “Tomorrow, we find out whether or not this place is worth what we’ve paid already or we get out of here. Hammond will understand or he’ll ask for my retirement papers.”

“Yes, sir,” Sam said as she watched him exit to his bedroom. Her eyes lingered on Daniel’s door. Should she interrupt him; should she knock on the door and find out what was going on? Down deep in the pit of her stomach the twisting truth caused her to feel nauseous. Daniel was hiding something, and she didn’t want to know what it was.

Chapter 5

Excerpt from Doctor Daniel Jackson’s Field Notebook

Probably won’t make sense. Don’t know what is happening to me. I thought I understood the Shadows, my theories seemed to be validated once we examined the laboratories of Nirriti. Wrong, I was wrong. Maybe I wasn’t. No, that isn’t right. The genetic experiments that created the Shadows seemed to have the purpose of using the modified humans as extensions of the upper caste. I thought the connection was one of subservience, but I’ve learned otherwise.

The Shadows need the Lay to connect mentally with them for their own stability. I’ve learned this after a week in the Jajin prison camp. God, I am so tired. They’re all around me, trying to get into my head all the time. The headache never ends, the pounding, scalding pain sears my brain, makes it hard to even keep my eyes open. So hard to write anything. In the lowest ring of the prison are the Shadows who tried to escape the caste system. Somehow, they learned of freedom. As with Shayde-un, the Lay probably infected them with the idea. I infected Shayde-un, and through his interaction with other Shadows, the infection spread. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t. Slavery is wrong, there is no excuse for it. I will never not believe that! 

God, get out of my head!

 

His eyes burned as he rose from the bed. Daniel had tried to sleep through the night, but the echoing noise in his head made it nearly impossible. Glancing over at Shayde-un, who slept on a small mat on the floor, Daniel shivered. He hadn’t lied to Sam when he told her he wanted to do his job; he just hadn’t admitted the whole truth. By allowing the Shadow to believe Daniel accepted the role of master; he hoped to figure out what was going on here and how this led to his friend’s demise.

The ache in his head continued. He reached for his backpack but the Shadow rose from his sleeping mat. Before he could even unzip a compartment to get out a blister pain of pain reliever, Shayde-un was bent before him, his forehead pressed to the highly polished hard wood floor.

“What may the I do? What may the I do?”

Daniel waved him off, but the Shadow whined and pawed at him. “I really don’t need any help.” The frustration grew. Last night he wasn’t even able to shower without the man hovering near the shower. It was annoying and disturbing all at once.

“The I will do it.”

“Okay, okay. Just get me some water.” As Daniel directed the Shadow, a warmth spread outward, easing the pain in his head. The Shadow smiled and retrieved the water.

He never looked at Daniel. Even before he took the pills, Daniel’s headache eased. It was the stress he was sure. 

A rap on the door jarred his thoughts. “Daniel, up and at ‘em.”

“Coming.”

Daniel pulled on his jacket, the Shadow helping him. The headache faded a bit more. He sighed, at least he wouldn’t be plagued by it all day, it seemed. He took another breath and opened the door.

“Feeling any better, Daniel?” Sam asked as Daniel entered the common room.

“Much, actually.”

Jack raised his chin at the Shadow creeping out of the bedroom after Daniel. “Learn anything of interest from Mickey Mouse over there?”

“Mickey? Oh, Shayde-un.” Daniel bit back his first thoughts. “Not much, Shayde-un is not very communicative.”

“I could have told you that yesterday and I don’t have a bazillion degrees,” Jack noted.

Daniel glanced around. “Where’s Teal’c?”

“I sent him back. I wanted some more back up if we’re going to be here for any length of time. You ready to get back to work now?”

Daniel nodded and glanced around the room. “Do you know if Rai-Ayh will be able to take us to the laboratories today?”

“Hopefully,” Sam said as she sipped a cup of tea. “Why don’t you eat something before we head out?”

The thought of food curdled his stomach, caused the nausea from the headache to bubble up into his throat. “No, no. Not hungry.”

“Daniel, when is the last time you ate anything?” Jack asked.

“I ate an energy bar when I got up this morning,” he lied. Ignoring Jack’s continued protests, Daniel went to the table and flipped open his notebook. “Shadye-un would you see when Rai-Ayh is coming?”

“The I will do it, the I will do it.” The creature scurried out of the room. 

“Oh Daniel,” Jack said in a sing-song way. “Can you let us in on the plan here? Seems you and your new side kick are getting way too cozy for comfort.”

Daniel reached for a fruit. He never actually ate it, just started to peel it. “I have a theory about the Shadows and Lay. I want to get started.”

“You have a theory?” Sam asked at the same time Jack said, “Care to let us in on the big thought of the day?”

“Yes and not yet.” He tore the fruit into pieces, as Rai-Ayh walked into the room followed by the Shadow. She bowed and Daniel followed suit. He gave a short bow, as Shadye-un curled next to his leg. “Rai-Ayh, do you believe we can tour the laboratory today.”

“It is my honor to show you the way.” She folded arms and slide her hands into the long sleeves of her robe. “May I ask if the Jaffa will accompany you?”

“Teal’c has gone back to our world to report to our leader, it might be some time before he returns,” Daniel said. “We’d really like to go now, and not wait for Teal’c.”

“Daniel.”

“Jack.”

“I mean it, Daniel.”

Daniel tossed the slices of the fruit into the bowl and said, “Aren’t you the one who wants to leave as soon as possible? Well, you can start the count down as soon as we’re able to see the lab.”

Jack rolled his eyes and turned his back on Daniel. Silence permeated the room, heavy and laden. It seemed to be that way lately. Always. Daniel crossed his arms and waited as Shayde-un curled by his feet. It had been years since Jack and Daniel could have a disagreement with any ease of emotions. He often wondered how Sam and Teal’c put up with their disagreements. 

The Shadow near his side caressed his knee, in an intimate touch Daniel knew should have disturbed him. Logic told him to stop the man, but something impeded him. He swallowed by a passing fear. 

“Okay, okay, let’s just get this over with as soon as possible.” Jack waved at him, though he never looked back at Daniel.

Rai-Ayh bowed, the sweep of her robe whispered on the floor as she turned to the door. “Please come, we may leave immediately.”

Chapter 6

Excerpt from the Provincial interrogation of the Jaffa Teal’c (final copy):

Interrogator no. 1: ‘It would serve you well to cooperate with us.

Prisoner; ‘It serves no purpose to cooperate with those you only wish to subjugate and refuse to know and accept the truth.’

Interrogator no. 2: ‘Pour the solution into the pouch.’

The solution is poured into the Jaffa’s pouch as he lies bounds to the examination table. He screams out.

Interrogator no.1: ‘Your infant Go’auld will die and you will follow unless you cooperate.’

Prisoner: ‘Once again, you give me no reason to cooperate with you. I will not forsake my friend Daniel Jackson for a society that supports slavery.”

Interrogator no. 2: ‘Pull out the symbiote.’

The infant Goa’uld is removed from the Jaffa’s pouch. The Jaffa is covered in sweat and curses in Goa’uld.

Interrogator no. 1: ‘You will die and your friend will suffer infinitely for his transgression. Only you can save him and you refuse.’

Prisoner: ‘I die free.’

General Hammond ushered Teal’c into his office and closed the door. He inquired about the situation on the planet. Teal’c found the General to be a compassionate leader with intelligence and balance in his rulings and decisions. He never made quick decisions but weighed all factors and continued to be a strong yet firm leader. Though Teal’c could not understand the current situation as it stood.

A valuable member of the Stargate Command, Doctor Ana Dupree had died by her own hand on a planet millions of lightyears away. Another infinitely valuable member of the Stargate Command, SG1 and his friend, Daniel Jackson had fallen ill with a sickness no one could explain and still the status of the mission was unchanged.

“I must inquire, General Hammond, of your intentions for this mission.” Teal’c stood even though General Hammond gestured for him to sit. General Hammond shrugged and remained standing himself.

“I’m not sure I understand your question, Teal’c. Is this something Colonel O’Neill would like to know?”

“No, it is not. Colonel O’Neill has asked for me to request a back-up team to continue the mission on the planet.” Teal’c considered the look of concern and confusion on General Hammond’s face. “It is for my own comprehension I ask this question. It is not my place to question your authority, and I have always found your rulings and directives to be fair and considerate. At this time, though, I can say I am not in support of continued exploration of this planet, nor am I in support of putting my team members in danger.”

General Hammond took a deep breath and then did sit. He put an arm on the chair and leaned into that arm, his chin rested in his hand. “You put me in a difficult position, son.”

“That is not my intention,” Teal’c noted.

“No, I don’t think it is.” General Hammond pulled the chair closed to the desk and placed his hands on the flat surface of it. “Teal’c, the SGC is in a difficult position itself. The appropriations committee for defense is pressuring us to bring more to the table. That is they want to see us produce something other than more risk to the planet.”

“I am in a quandary, General Hammond. The people of this world and Stargate Command have worked diligently to free others from the slavery of the Goa’uld, yet they are willing to risk lives to accomplish their mission.”

Hammond folded his hands on the desk. “Surely, you understand that in war lives must be risked.”

“Indeed.”

“Then tell me what this is all about.”

“It is about putting people’s lives needlessly at risk. We have acknowledged there is risk on the planet. With the death of Doctor Ana Dupree and the sudden unexplained illness of Daniel Jackson, we take great risk to our team to continue this mission.”

“Did Colonel O’Neill ask you to tell me this?”

“He did not.”

General Hammond glanced down at his desk then back up to Teal’c. “I appreciate your candor, Teal’c, and I will offer the same to you. I have to confess this whole thing eats at my caw. I don’t want any of my teams to be there. We’ve lost one promising scientist and are endangering another. No, I don’t like it at all. But sometimes we have to find a way to live with the decisions that are made for us.”

“I would request that you considering sending in more than one team. It would be advantageous for us to have numbers,” Teal’c said, noting how General Hammond leaned forward and waited for his advice. Something in his chest warmed yet the thing in his gut squirmed with loathing.  
“Is that your tactical advice, Teal’c?”

“It is.”

General Hammond nodded. “Then consider it done. I will have SG3 and SG 5 suit up and get ready to move out within the hour.”

“General Hammond, I would like to return to my team immediately. They are facing perils of which we have not identified and Daniel Jackson’s condition is unpredictable at best. I would appreciate your permission to return.”

“Of course,” General Hammond said as he stood. Teal’c followed the General to the gate room. “Tell me, Teal’c, how is Doctor Jackson.”

“He is not himself.”

General Hammond considered Teal’c, then nodded. “Do you think he may fall victim to whatever happened to Doctor Dupree?”

“It is entirely possible.” 

The gate started to dial at General Hammond’s order. “Make sure that doesn’t happen, Teal’c. I want Doctor Jackson to come home safe and sound.”

“Indeed.” Teal’c walked up the ramp as the wormhole shimmered. He turned once to nod his farewell to the General and stepped through the gate. As he re-emerged on the other side, a party of soldiers welcomed him, their weapons drawn and aimed at him. Several had weapons of unknown origin and type. Others had long curved blades pointed to slice out his heart. His infant Goa’uld twisted in anticipation.

“Jaffa, you are under arrest. Lay down your weapons,” the Commander said as he pushed the front of the surrounding soldiers.

Counting the numbers of soldiers, Teal’c realized that he would not be able to confront all twenty without serious damage to himself. He would not be able to get to his team on time. 

“I am part of the team from Tau’ri and am no threat to you.”

The Commander smirked. “The Tau’ri scum are being arrested even as we speak, Jaffa. You will all suffer the judgement of the Order. You, especially.”

CHAPTER 7

Excerpt from Doctor Daniel Jackson’s Field Notebook

It was too easy to make the wrong conclusion. Even as Sam and I reviewed the database of Nirriti, we drew summary statements which guided us to the most obvious conclusions. How could we not? 

I’ve come to accept that these things, these creatures hold the key to my survival. This ring of prison, this ring of hell is ruled by them. I have no other choice but to let them into my mind, to let them in. 

So, I’m writing this as a last confession to you, Jack, Sam, and Teal’c. I have no other choice but to give in, give up, and surrender. I have no idea where you are, what they are doing to you. Are you still alive? Please forgive my weakness. Please understand I have no other choice. They surround me night and day. I am not even sure there is such a thing as day anymore, down in the depths of this pit. When I set down this pen I am not sure I will ever pick it up again. I am going to open up my mind, let down the barriers and let them come. I can’t fight it anymore. They won’t let me eat, drink, sleep. They are constantly there, haunting me, attacking me.

Sam, if we only knew the truth then. If I could tell you now, I would. I am sorry – I don’t know where you are. I was trying to hold on long enough, mount some sort of resistance. But you cannot resist what you do not understand.

Teal’c, you are the strong one. You understand the concept of freedom far beyond my simple comprehension of the subject. Hopefully, you will figure it out. Save them, Teal’c, save them.

Jack, please understand there was nothing you could have done to save me. I lost this battle on my own. I should have known there was something far worse Ana couldn’t say, didn’t say. I should have been more vigilant. This society is not a civilization as we understand it. It is more like a parasitic relationship than anything else.

But how was I to know that the parasites weren’t the Lay at all? Ana told us, she told us. Stay away from the Shadows…stay away.

Daniel rubbed his forehead as he bent over the computer console. They’d entered the small cavern next to the cove just under an hour ago. The dim lighting and the heavy scent of mold and mildew from the moisture build up in the caves caused the headache he’d thought was gone to rear its ugly head again. He pulled off his glasses and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. The pain shooting through his brain was nearly unbearable. 

It must be his allergies. The caverns of Nirriti were close to the ocean’s shoreline. As they approached the line of caves, Daniel had heard the crash of the ocean and, for a moment, wished to turn in that direction. But something yanked him from those thoughts and he’d trudged behind Sam and Jack toward the cave system.

Now, as he leaned over the vast array of computers and data streamed before him, his body ached, his brain felt as if it bled into his skull.

Shadye-un scooted closer to him, kneeling on the floor and peering up at Daniel. For a second, something curdled inside of him as he glanced at the man. Was he a man? Or was he something else? Daniel shivered and put the thought aside. He admonished himself and quietly told himself to focus on the task at hand. 

He scanned through the data files, surveying the different projects of the Goa’uld. Some were simple battle plans while others were complex genetic experiments. He couldn’t follow the flow of the genetic research, but he read through the results and conclusions. Sam joined him at the computer array and asked him about his progress. She depended on him because most of the files were in Goa’uld.

“Battle plans, logistics, even delivery schedules,” Daniel said, his voice straining against the pain throbbing in his skull. “Most of it, well, isn’t really useful. The research Nirriti was performing here was done ages ago. Probably some of her first experiments. The dates coincide with her rise in power. What’s interesting is the genetic studies she was doing.”

“Anything of value?”

“Splicing, manipulation at both the DNA and RNA levels,” Daniel stated. He glanced up at her and felt as if his eyeballs were filled with sand. Shadye-un whined, but Daniel tried to ignore him. “As far as I can tell, the experiments developed this society. Unfortunately, Nirriti didn’t used the terms Lay or Shadow. She used the terms Infrastructure and Functional.”

“Infrastructure for people?” Jack asked.

“Which is which?” Sam interjected.

“I can’t be sure,” Daniel said, shrugging. “From the information here, I think it might be the Functional as the Lay and the Infrastructure as the Shadow.”

“But why? What are their definitions?” Sam said as she leaned against the corner of the console and crossed her arms. 

“Not sure. Functional in society? Maybe, I don’t know?” Daniel said. Shadye-un pawed at him again. He pushed the man off without looking at him.

“But infrastructure for the Shadows? What does that mean?” Sam said and stared down at the kneeling man at his feet.

Daniel couldn’t look, he knew he shouldn’t look. But something drew him, dragged him to gaze down at the Shadow. Like a bore the Shadow’s eyes drilled into Daniel’s mind, breaking down and shattering the natural defenses of a singular mind. The Shadow tethered itself to Daniel, anchored and secured. It wrapped itself around Daniel as a many tendriled creature might intertwine and strangulate its prey.

A light touch on his shoulder yanked Daniel from the inner pain, the ever increasing headache. “What?”

Sam held him and asked, “Daniel, are you all right.” She wasn’t looking at him, but glanced instead of her commanding officer.

“Daniel?” Jack walked from the entrance of the small inner cave. “Care to walk us down Sesame Street?”

“Sorry,” he said, squeezing his eyes closed. The whispers of the man, creature at his feet intensified in his head. “Sorry, must be the mold causing my allergies to act up. I have a terrible headache.”

Sam reached for her backpack but the Shadow was there first, and rummaged through it as she protested.

“It’s okay, Sam, he knows I want a blister pack.”

Jack frowned and, with his P90 slung casually over his shoulder, asked, “How could he possibly know that, Daniel?”

“Because I had some this morning. He just put two and two together, Jack.” Daniel swallowed the two acetaminophen pills dry, as he also gulped down the truth. He knew something was off, wrong. Why didn’t he just tell Jack? Another wave of pain overtook him, like a cyclone battering him from within. What the hell was going on? Was this how Ana felt, was she being attacked? Or was it the Shadows, trying to communicate, trying to ask for help?

“Just as long as Mister Creepy here doesn’t get too friendly,” Jack said, eying the Shadow as he slid back to Daniel’s side.

“Jack.”

“Daniel.”

Daniel waved him off and turned back to Sam’s question. “Considering how this civilization operates, I would say that Nirriti thought of the Shadows as providing servant like services to the Lay. The Lay are the cultural foundation, therefore Functional while the Shadows are the basic building blocks of society. They do the chores so that the Functional section of the civilization are free to expand, grow, develop.”

Sam considered his explanation. “But that doesn’t sound very much like what a Goa’uld would be interested in doing. Why develop a society where the cultural and intellectual portion is free to grow and evolve? That sounds very anti-Goa’uld to me.”

It did, he had to admit. He rested back in the seat. Why? 

The Shadow curled next to him as if he was a dog. The touch brought on feelings of revulsion but also need and contentment. His heartbeat raced as he thought of his need. He took a quick glance at Jack, guarding the doorway. 

Shit, he thought.

This wasn’t it at all. Daniel jumped up, stumbling away from the console, from the Shadow. The falling pieces seemed to form in front of him. So easily understood and yet so distant and vague. These creatures, these Shadows, weren’t servants. They were something more. 

Shadye-un reared up, snarling at Daniel.

“Daniel?” Sam called out as the Shadow leapt at him.

“What the hell?” Jack swung the P90 around at the Shadow.

Shadye-un clawed at Daniel’s collar, twisting it. “The I will take you, the I will take you.”

Daniel whipped around, trying to break free. He yelled, “Jack, don’t, don’t.”

“That is enough, Daniel!” Jack barked and pulled the creature from Daniel’s shirt. Shadye-un shrieked and snarled, his teeth bit down into Daniel’s hand.

“What the --.” Jack kicked at the Shadow.

“Jack,” Daniel whispered as he staggered, then fell to his knees. “He has me.”

Jack hesitated as the Shadow tore away from Daniel, blooding dripping from his mouth. He spoke and, for the first time, possessed a power none of them had witness. “You’re Daniel Jackson is mine. He will not break free; he will never break free.”

“Damn it to hell,” Jack said as he raised his weapon. 

Abruptly, the room burst open with Lay soldiers surrounding them. Rai-Ayh was thrown to the floor at their feet, her face badly bruised and her hands bound behind her. The Governor of Pa’chen swept into the laboratory. Shadye-un smiled and folded in on himself. The smile reminded Daniel of someone with a secret, a secret shared only with a select few – and the Lay were not part of the select.  
“You are under arrest, Doctor Jackson.”

He couldn’t answer, the thing growing in his head expanded. His mouth opened and only a small moan issued. Sam went to go to his side but a soldier stopped her, threatening with a crossbow. 

“What the hell is going on here in Oz, Governor?” Jack barked. “Seriously, what the hell kind of charade are you playing at? First, one of my scientists dies, now my other is sick and you want to arrest him. Tell me, Sees-things or whatever the hell your name is, what is this game?”

Shadye-un sneered and Seon-Lee glanced at him. Something passed between them that Daniel couldn’t describe. He would swear it was some form of communication; he would swear the Governor had just asked for permission.

He’d had it all wrong. They all did.

“I will describe to you what will happen to you,” Seon-Lee said as he meticulously adjusted the sleeves of his ornate robe. “Doctor Jackson has contaminated our way of life, our society. With his questions regarding the freedom of the Shadow, and your Doctor Dupree’s constant questions of Rai-Ayh regarding the servitude in Pa’chen.” 

The Governor nodded to the woman at his feet. “Questions, which are considered against our sacred Order have been asked and therefore, must be punished.”

“Listen, we didn’t know about any oath or Order or anything,” Jack said and, for once, Daniel was happy Jack was following what Daniel had preached all these years. “We understand we stepped on your toes. We didn’t mean too. We’ll just grab our gear and leave.”

“Oh no,” Seon-Lee said. “In order to purge our Order of your contamination we must commit you to the Jajin prison for cleansing. You, your woman and your Jaffa will be cleansed and released.”

“And Daniel,” Jack asked. Daniel knew from the look on Jack’s face that he was itching to pull the trigger on his weapon. No one told Jack O’Neill he needed to be ‘cleansed’.

“He will be committed to the lowest rung of the Jajin prison for his crime. There he will fully and wholly succumb to the Order,” Seon-Lee said and gestured. 

The soliders advanced and Jack swung his weapon around but the soldier next to Sam, yanked her and, suddenly, she was their protection.

“Drop the weapon and come quietly,” Seon-Lee whispered in the most arrogant tone. “Or else you will suffer the fate of Rai-Ayh. She is to be executed.”

Jack raised his hands for a moment, then popped the strap holding the P90 to his gear. He laid it on the floor. “Listen, take me. I’m in charge, their leader. You understand how order goes, right?”

Seon-Lee gave Jack a quiet smile, though a shift of pain shaded his eyes. “Yes, Colonel, I do.”

CHAPTER 8

…..Excerpt from the Honored Book of the High Order Appendix 5.6, eyes only Governor of Pa’chen

The Honored, High Order of people is a necessary and venerable path to our respected place in this universe. Without the Order, there would be only madness of the Lay. As given to us by our most respected Goddess, the Shadow are a part of our being and could no sooner be cut off than an arm or a leg. Though our Goddess warned of their inferiority and their lack of human traits they will firmly and assuredly hold together our Order and deem us fit for worship of our most esteemed Goddess, Nirriti. The Shadow feed us our understanding of the world and with it give us our pathway to the Goddess. Without the Shadows, the Lay would be like lost children in the forest without hope of finding our way to fully worship and love our Goddess. 

The Governor must understand and respect the way of our Order. If the governor or any others question this order, the Lay and Shadow may break. With this Breaking, madness will surely overcome all else in the Lay. The Shadow are our sacred adherence to the Order. Their minds join us together into one thought, one society. It is with the gravest voice, the Governor is warned never to allow questions to the Order. Freedom from the Order is impossible. Neither the Shadows nor the Lay may extradite from the Order, for to do so would be to unravel all of society and commit to the madness of Jajin.

Governor Seon-Lee laid the Book on the table in the observation room of the Jajin prison. It had been five weeks since the Shayneal Incident. So, minor yet so dangerous. Dangerous enough that the Seon-Lee had sacrificed his concubine, Rai-Ayh to death. He still remembered the ecstasy and pleasure he’d experienced as he thought of signing her death order; he still recalled the near breathlessness as he looked upon her decapitated, mutilated body. How the smile crept onto his lips, how his body responded to it. His hands trembled as he grasped the Book on the table. The Order had been preserved, the Lay were no longer in danger. 

It had been said, long ago, that the Governor of Pa’chen possessed the most difficult job, that the burdens of office often aged and devoured the official holding the position. At first, he understood it to mean the politics of dealing with an immovable parliament, an over privileged upper class. But now, he comprehended the depths of the burden, the depths of despair. It was not, in fact, about the routine politics of office and government, but acceptance of the Order which twisted in his gut. It was also hiding this fact deep within the recesses of his brain. Could he hide it at all?

He glanced to the Shadow lying on the mat near the door. It looked like a dog to him in some ways. A lowly beast, nothing more. But it was something more, now he understood exactly what it was. He should have never allowed the strangers, off-worlders to come to his homeland. He should have ordered them away. Instead, curiosity urged him to open his house to them, to allow these people access to his way. He’d been careful. He assigned his own Shadow to be amongst them. But that was his greatest error. With Shadye-un amongst them, Seon-Lee’s own mind, and the mind of the entire Lay were at risk. Shadye-un had done his best to probe the strangers, to invade their minds so that the Order may benefit from the off-worlders’ knowledge. Instead, the off-worlders questioned the Order, the off-worlders minds did not work the same way as the Lay. The off-worlders whispered of freedoms which the Lay were not capable of attaining. Shadye-un attempted to stop the malignant thoughts. 

The memory of Dupree’s death echoed in Seon-Lee’s mind. The pleasure and joy of feeling her strangle herself gave him a near sexual climax. He rubbed his hand over his face. When had the depravity overwhelmed him, when had this become his normal needs and thoughts? 

Glancing over at Shadye-un curled on the mat, Seon-Lee shivered. How many years had it been? How long had he known Shadye-un? Shadye-un had been with him since he was in the cradle. Their minds had grown up together, they were more than Lay and Shadow, they were twins, like all the people of Pa’chen. They were born twins, Lay and Shadow sharing experiences from the moment of conception, throughout development in the womb and all through life. Shadye-un was more than a brother to him; the Shadow was his sanity.

He looked down into the pit of the lowest ring of the prison. He watched as the Shadow, the ones born with a dead twin, or no twin at all, roamed about a central figure. In the dirt, twisted, filthy and near catatonic lay Daniel Jackson. The bones of his body stuck out at odd angles and he reminded Seon-Lee of the decomposing body of a bird; thin, fragile, broken. The sexual thrill assaulted his body again as he gazed down at the face of the scientist. Turning, he saw Shadye-un crawling over to him with a sly smile on his face. A transient thought filtered through his brain. He wanted freedom, wanted Shadye-un to be in that ring down below.

Shadye-un reared up and hissed.

Seon-Lee raised his hand. “Rest, my brother. I understand the Order and commit to it.” 

The Shadow eased down and sidled up to his side. 

“The off-worlders have healed from their cleansing. It should be time to release them,” Seon-Lee said. “They have been watching their companion lie in the dirt for more than a week. I believe he may be dead by the end of the day.”

Shadye-un only purred.

“It is what you wanted, my brother?” Seon-Lee shifted his focus to the window to view Daniel Jackson again. “His thought have been eradicated, his mind is a blank. This has pervaded the Order. It has restored the Order, has it not?”

“The I is not sure, the I is not sure,” Shadye-un croaked.

“We acted immediately upon his discovery of the Order; he has been in the prison for five weeks. Surely, he could not have disrupted the Order irreparably.” Seon-Lee folded his hands in the sleeves of his robe, not wanting to stroke the Shadow even though the compulsion was great.

“The I notes your refusal of the Order,” Shadye-un mocked. “The I recalls to you our great Goddess and our great Book.”

Seon-Lee glimpsed the Book. Nirriti created the Order, to serve her, yet she abandoned them long ago. He’d wanted the off-worlders to find out why, but what he’d discovered was the Goddess was not real.

Shadye-un reached up into the sleeves of Seon-Lee’s robe and clawed at his flesh. He felt the warm blood leak from the wounds. 

“Don’t worry, my brother. I could no sooner change the Order of things than I could cut my legs off.” He nodded down to the thing at his feet, the thing his mother bred with him in the womb. Silently, he asked Shadye-un to help him.

Rising deep within his core as Seon-Lee studied the dying figure of Daniel Jackson, the pleasure, satiation pulsed through him. He submitted to it. A glorious wave overwhelmed him as he thought of Daniel Jackson’s last breath. For a moment, the image of Daniel Jackson being burned alive flickered through his brain and he voiced his pleasure at the sight in a slight moan. Yes, he must submit to the Order, his mind was not his own. The Great Goddess Nirriti had created them to work in concert to ensure the subservience of the species.

He called the guard. The Lay soldier came into the room without a sound. “Contact their world and tell this General Hammond he is to come through to take custody of his people immediately. Bring Daniel Jackson to the main square. Make sure he is properly cared for. Once he is in the square, the last of who he is will be disposed of.”

“Sir?” the guard said.

“He will be burned alive as the General and his people watch.”

Shadye-un cooed at his feet, promising great rewards.

CHAPTER 9

…..Excerpt from the Memorandum for Record sent from General George Hammond to the Senate Subcommittee on Defense Appropriations

While it is understood that the Senate Committee must prioritize the needs of the program and the funding requests, I respectfully disagreed with the decision to not negotiate the release of the premier team of the program. The loss of the team would have long term effects on the operations and strategic defense of the planet. Though I followed this directive, I did not refuse their offers to discuss the situation.

The leadership on Pa’chen has offered to release the program’s premier team to my custody. The stipulations of the agreement include a meeting between the Governor of Pa’chen and myself. The Governor has demanded no weapons, no soldiers or back-up. I am to bring a non-combat assistant and one doctor to see to any medical needs of the team. 

I will take full responsibility for the health and welfare of the recovery team. The recovery team will include Doctor Janet Fraiser and Sgt. Walter Harriman. I commanded them to join the team and they followed orders. By the time you receive this MFR, the outcome of this mission will be complete.

George Hammond stared at the surface of the wormhole, watched it shimmer and glow. There were times when he would watch team after team entered the Stargate and a slight ping of jealous would pinch deep down inside. He’d flown a desk in this bureaucratic Air Force for too long. So, while he desired to step through the wormhole, he rarely actually made it possible. Now, he would fight back the trepidation and anxiety. Now, he would step through to save his team, his people.

He glanced down at Walter standing by his right hand side. The man fidgeted, but his resolve was written on his face. The shorter man looked up at George and smiled, nodded. 

“Did the Pa’chen tell you about their medical state, General?” Janet stood on his left side, her face fixed with a steady concentration. 

“The Governor indicated that the Colonel, Major Carter and Teal’c had been cleanse and were in good health.” He raised a hand to her questions. “I’ve no idea what it means, Doctor, and didn’t think it would be advisable to wait it out for further discussions.”

She adjusted the strap on her backpack, picked up the large case at her feet, and said, “Did they mention Daniel’s state?”

George bowed his head and frowned. “No, they don’t plan on releasing Doctor Jackson.”

“And we’re not allowed to negotiate his release, correct?” 

George answered, “Correct.” He turned to Walter and said, “You have the juice? I need all my people at top form, Sergeant, and I don’t want hypoglycemia an issue during this mission.”

Walter shifted the backpack. “Yes, General, thank you for thinking of me.”

“Let’s go.”

They stepped and George held his breath as his atoms were torn apart and reassembled half a galaxy away. He knew it was ludicrous, a team of a doctor, an over the hill General and an enlisted as his rescue team. But it wasn’t really a rescue, was it? It was retrieval and it wasn’t even a complete retrieval at that. 

He cursed as he came out of the Stargate onto the world of Pa-chen. The reception was far from warm. A dozen guards stood at attention as they walked down the ramp. The guards were armed with both ceremonial swords and pistols. Each one of them was searched for hidden weapons. The guards found none. George would not risk it; he wanted to get his people back. He swallowed hard, even if it wasn’t all of his people.

The lead guard ushered them across the vast square. The sun glinting from the edge of the red painted tiled roof tops and gave the world a hint of blood coloring. He noticed Walter staring at a structure at the center of the square. Turning slight, George frowned yet said nothing. It was obviously some sort of platform to publically execute prisoners. Deep inside, George held the fear, the anxiety that always twisted him, tortured him any time he let his teams walk through the Stargate. From hostile environments, to diseases, to aggressive cultures, he had to eat his dread when he let his people explore.

He wondered if it was worth it.

The guards marched them to a pavilion. They walked up the wooden stairs of the tented structure. Beautiful silks covered the pavilion, swayed in the light winds. Standing at the top of the steps, the Governor of Pa’chen nodded to them.

“I am assuming you are the leader, General Hammond?”

“Yes, I’m the leader of Stargate Command. These are my retrieval team members. Doctor Janet Fraiser, and Sergeant Walter Harriman.”

The Governor ignored both Walter and Janet, and for that George was grateful. The Governor waved George to a seat under the canopy. There was only one other chair. George eyed the ornately carved chair; the fierce dragons with their tongues protruding were intimidating. The red velvet cushion was overstuffed and looked as if no one had ever used it. Janet gave him a quick look, warning him.

He nodded and sat. His team moved behind him, yet they had an unobstructed view of the square. 

Just as George started to clear his throat to ask what the heck was going on, the Governor sidled over to the chair next to his and sat as well. It was then George noticed the gray man crouched near the foot of the chair. The man sneered at George and he turned away.

“Your people will be returned to you today, General. It is with some regret, I must ask you not to attempt to visit our world again. The concepts introduced by your people have contaminated our society and our Order. It was our understanding you would not interfere with our society, but it has been the exact opposite.”

He choked down a reply. Instead, he shifted the discussion to the matter at hand. “When will we be able to see SG1. I would like Doctor Fraiser to be able to examine them to ensure they are fit for gate travel.”

Governor Seon-Lee smiled but never gave a glance to Janet. He reached out a hand and stroked the gray man hovering at his feet. The long folds of his robes concealed the crouched man, except for the crown of his head. “They are to be released to your custody very soon.” 

Seon-Lee raised a hand to the guards below. The lead guardsman signaled to one of the large buildings surrounding the square. The doors to the building were huge, several stories high and massive in width. It took three guards to heave them open. A troop of guards in ceremonial garb strode out of the dark recesses of the building. The formation of the troop clearly indicated prisoners were within their ranks. George saw Janet stretching to glimpse SG1. He raised a hand slightly to stop her. The last thing he wanted was to spook the locals.

Three members of SG1 were escorted to the pavilion. Each of them squinted in the red stained daylight as if they had been jailed in a dimly lit prison. From his review of his team members, George judged that just might have been the case. Major Carter’s eyes were tearing from the bright sun light and Jack bowed his head. Teal’c stood close to his team mates, angling his body to afford them some shade. 

It was then that George wished he wasn’t a good airman, he didn’t live by the book. But as a General he was bound to it, bound to the higher goals of his government whether or not he believed in them. Yet as he watched his premier team cowed by people without any common decency, he gripped the arms of the chair, digging his fingernails into the polished wood.

“Your people have satisfied our requirements for incarceration following a questioning of the Order as egregious as they have committed,” Seon-Lee was saying.

“Does this include Doctor Jackson?” the General asked. He knew it did not, but he had to start the conversation somewhere. He refused to leave the archeologist behind in this convoluted culture.

Seon-Lee eased his mass around to face George. His features gave nothing away and, for a moment, George thought his eyes looked flat, glossless, dead. The gray man, the Shadow, oozed around the drape of the Governor’s robes and hissed at George.

“In a gesture of kindness, our Government and the High Order have decided that you may bring Doctor Jackson home once he has completed his sentence.”

“And when will that be, sir?” George asked. He could see the rest of SG1 straining to hear what was going on up in the pavilion.

“Today, my good General, today.” The Governor called to the guard. “Hin-No, bring the prisoner.” 

A large animal, looking like the cross between a horse and an ox, pulled a cart from the side building near the back of the pavilion. Shackled as were the other members of SG1 at both wrist and ankle, Daniel Jackson lay in the back of the wagon. From George’s perspective, the archeologist was not moving, nor was he aware of his surroundings. Several of the Shadows rested around him as if cocooning him. Terror shivered up his back, spiked the hairs of George’s neck.

Below, Jack was struggling with his captors, using his bound hands as a club to free himself as both Carter and Teal’c supported his efforts. The General called to them, “Stop, Colonel O’Neill, stop.”

Jack bit back a curse but ceased his frantic efforts to get to the inert form of Daniel. Major Carter sunk back into Teal’c’s shadow as they watched the cart dragged to the center platform.

“You do intend to release Doctor Jackson to my custody?” George asked. Though he did not turn around, he heard the ever increasing shuffling of his doctor and sergeant behind him. 

“Of course, sir.” The Governor reached down to the Shadow at his feet. The man rose to his full height of nearly six feet. How could such a tall man fold himself into a small bundle of rags.

The Shadow went to the edge of the pavilion, clinging to the railing and let out a shriek. The wail pierced his eardrums, thrummed a punishing beat to his heart. Shadows in the nest around Daniel rose up and joined him. The howl continued for long minutes, without breath or pause. As George watched in horror, Daniel started to convulse as if his body vibrated to their unholy lament. The three other members of SG1 tried to ignore the screeching, while at the same time shoved at their guards to see Daniel’s state.

As the screaming ended, Daniel slumped back onto the floor of the wagon. The Shadows surrounding him fell to the floor as well, but they did not move or seem to breathe. They seemed more like dolls than living beings. 

Near Seon-Lee, the Shadow collapsed in on himself and then curled around the legs of the Governor.

“The I tells you it is done, the I tells you their fate is accepted.” Tears formed at the corners of the Shadow’s eyes.

“My sweet one, my sweet Shadye-un, their sacrifice will be remembered and said in song for many years,” the Governor said as he bent over the Shadow and kissed him gently on the lips.

George heard a gasp from behind him. Turning, he saw Janet bit back the bile he was sure was rising. His own stomach twisted at the strange actions before him. It was then he realized that Janet wasn’t looking at the Governor or Shadye-un at all. It was then he heard Major Carter’s voice.

“Daniel?”

George followed Janet’s line of vision. Daniel moved, purposeful and hesitant. He grasped the side of the cart and hoisted himself to a sitting position. By his expression, George could tell he didn’t recognize where he was or what was happening. For a moment, the archeologist looked down at his bound hands then back up. His gaze found Jack; he opened his mouth as if he might say something but then a guard yanked him from the cart, making him fall. He clattered from the cart, his hip hitting the brick ground and then his head. The sickening crack of skull on brick echoed through the square.

“Daniel!” Jack called but one of the guards at Jack’s side swung around and hit Jack in the face. He bent over, cradling his nose.

“Governor, it was my understanding you were going to deliver my people to me in good condition. I do not call beating them a good faith measure,” George protested. 

“The good General is correct. As a good faith measure, please unbind the other members of SG1 and bring them to the pavilion to witness the completion of Doctor Jackson’s sentence.”

Jack, Sam and Teal’c were guided up to the pavilion to the other side of the Governor. Their cuffs were removed.

George held his breath as the guards shepherded Daniel to the platform, the very same platform George identified earlier as an execution platform. Looking over his shoulder, he met Walter’s gaze. The sergeant unclipped his backpack and let it soundlessly drop to the floor of the pavilion.

“Excuse me, General, but what is your subordinate doing?” Seon-Lee asked as he petted the head of Shadye-un. 

It was Janet who answered. “Sergeant Harriman has low blood sugar. Due to this condition, I’ve asked him to bring juice with him. Would you like to inspect one?” Janet leaned over George and offered the juice box to the Governor.

“No, no, that will be fine.”

Janet handed the box back to Walter and nodded to the General as they turned to watch. George ignored Jack’s inquiring gaze. 

The guard named, Hin-No, jerked the chain binding Daniel’s hands together. He pulled it up and strung it to a hook on a stone pole in the middle of the platform. From the position, they could see the wasting of Daniel’s body. The tattered shirt exposed his ribs and flattened belly. His arms were all angles and his skin was pale. Fresh blood ran down the side of his face from the wound on his head.If the chains weren’t holding him up, George doubted the man would be able to support himself for very long. 

One of the guards walked over to Hin-No and handed him a small container. It was no larger than his fist. Hin-No unscrewed the top and the second guard handed him a brush. They bowed and then the second guard moved off.

With due care, Hin-No stepped up to Daniel and began painting the substance of the jar over Daniel’s exposed skin.

“Shit.” He heard Jack whisper.

Once again, he remained impassive but said to Walter, “Don’t you think you should have some juice.”

“Yes, sir,” Walter said. 

For some reason, George thought the sergeant would fumble with the wrapping, drop the straw. But Walter’s hands were steady and clinical in their operation. He prepared several different juice boxes, being careful to not mix up the straws. 

The second guard approached Hin-No again, a flaming torch in his hands.

Jack mumbled, “Whatever you’re gonna do, do it now.”

George kept silence, refused to look at Jack. His attention gripped by the scene below him. As the torch was passed from the guard to Hin-No, Walter lobbed one of the boxes toward the platform. It exploded just as it hit Hin-No. The torch tumbled to the ground. The flash of flames spread out like firecrackers. Before George could say a word, another box was ignited in the pavilion. The Governor and his pet Shadow fell to the floor trying to find cover from the blast.

Jack and Teal’c flew into action, not asking a word, not needing instructions. Boxes from the backpack were tossed from Walter in succession. The Major and the doctor raced down the steps as guards tried to tackle them. Jack hard pitched a box at the center of the guards; it exploded sending everyone off their feet. Sam and Janet were the first to scramble up as they headed toward Daniel.

George, Jack and Teal’c made their way through the crowd. The sound of gunfire cracked the air, but as George spun around to see where it came from, he realized Teal’c had disarmed two of the guards. Jack was armed as was Teal’c. 

Jack leveled the gun at the Governor and said, “Call them off, call them off now or you’re dead.”

George watched as the man crumpled to the floor. “I’m already dead.” He was crying, moaning as he held the body of Shadye-un in his arms. A bright red stain spread across the man’s chest.

The guards stopped in their actions, staring with wide eyed horror as the Governor rocked the cooling body of Shadye-un in his arms. 

“General?” Jack said and waved for him to join them at the steps of the pavilion. No one stopped them. The guards immobilized by the sorrow engulfing their leader. 

“Colonel?” Major Carter called. George looked over to Daniel and saw that she was attempting to release him but couldn’t reach the hook.

Teal’c was there before either George or Jack could pick their way across the crowded square. The Jaffa tenderly released his team mate, slowly bringing him into his embrace.

“Teal’c?” Janet said.

“You may examine Daniel Jackson when we are safely off of this planet.” Teal’c began walking toward the Stargate without instruction or orders.

“We follow the big guy, come on.” Jack took Teal’c weapon and handed it to George. He welcomed the feel of steel in his hands. 

Janet was rattling off Daniel’s injuries, noting the fresh burns from the sparks igniting the substance painted across his bare flesh. No one interfered or impeded them on their way to the gate. The entire city seemed paralyzed.

“Dial us home, Major.”

The gate flashed and Walter input the code on the GDO. Before they entered the surface of the wormhole, Jack turned to him and said, “Juice boxes, General, juices boxes?”

He shrugged. “You do what you have to, to bring your people home.”

They both looked over at the unconscious form of Daniel.

Without another word, they stepped as one toward home.

 

CHAPTER 10

……excerpt from Colonel Jack O’Neill’s private email to General Hammond

…..I thought the worst of it was knowing my team was being physically tortured. Watching what they did to Teal’c makes me wonder what the hell we are doing out there in the first place. Why care about saving the humans of this galaxy when all we can do to one another is find another way to make Hannibal Lector look like a good guy?

I’m sorry George, but telling me it is for the better good just doesn’t cut it anymore. Did you hear what they did to Carter? How she’s recovered, I just don’t know. She’s a strong person, but she’ll just lose herself more in all the techno-shit she hides in. There’s a good person there, we all know that, but what happened on Pa’crap and just about anywhere else we go, isn’t worth what it does to her. 

And Daniel.

Christ, don’t make me even think about Daniel. We have no idea if we’ll ever get him back. George, he might be there physically, but who did we bring back with us? I don’t recognize him. He’s broken. Daniel and I don’t see eye to eye a lot of the time, George, you know that. I still curse myself for allowing what happened to happen. Do you know he was letting that thing in his head for all I can guess? Why? What possible reason would he have to endanger himself, the whole team like that? Daniel is inscrutable sometimes. No, all the time. Does he realize what he’s done? He’s robbed us of him.

I don’t give a damn about what happened to me. Break my nose, ribs, whatever – but my team has been chewed up like an old rawhide. I don’t recognize them anymore. Hell, I don’t recognize me anymore.

Why am I writing this to you? Am I asking to retire? Or am I just venting like a teenager. Maybe a little of both. All I can tell you, George, is that I am tired. I don’t think I can do this anymore. Too many people hurt my team, my family.

The condition of his team varied, but by far Teal’c was in the worst physical condition. Junior had suffered extensive damage and Fraiser spent a good amount of time in surgery with the little bastard trying to help him heal. It seemed to be working; Teal’c had been released to his quarters with strict orders to rest. Jack hadn’t seen him in three days. Fraiser seemed pleased with his progress after she’d visited him this morning.

The thought of Teal’c weakened and very nearly killed brought home to Jack just what had happened. Teal’c, the impervious, Teal’c, the strong. It didn’t hold anymore. After Pa’crap planet, the whole image of Teal’c shattered. 

Jack rubbed a hand up and down his forehead, willing the ache to go away. He sat in the corner of the isolation room, staring at Daniel. 

Daniel.

Daniel sat in the opposite corner of the room but on the floor; the white of the infirmary wrist band stark against his skin. Jack felt like he was having a staring contest with a doll. Might as well be a damned doll for all the interaction. Fraiser couldn’t find anything wrong with Daniel, other than malnourishment; he was physically in the best shape of all of them. They never tortured Daniel. Whatever they did, they stole his soul.

Jack leaned his head back, letting the ceiling lights burn his retinas to white blindness. He didn’t want to see the ghost in the corner anymore. It had been days and no one had been able to get Daniel to speak. Fraiser could only say he seemed to be locked in some inner world, or torment. No one knew. They brought back an imposter.

He heard a shift as if someone crawled on the floor. Looking over at Daniel, he saw his friend bent over. His stomach turned and he closed his eyes to shut out the sight. He looked like one of those creatures; he moved and sat like one of the Shadows. Daniel slipped over to Jack, sitting at his feet. He pawed at Jack with clawed hands. His blue eyes fogged. 

Jack cringed but bit back his reaction. He wanted to knock Daniel’s hand away like some mutated monster from a B-movie. But this time, Jack stayed still as Fraiser had requested. Daniel moved with deliberate actions, laying his face on Jack’s boots.

He muffled the curse about explode from his mouth. Jack looked up at Fraiser, watching from the observation room. What the hell did she want from him? This creature, this alien was not Daniel. Yet, something inside of him stopped him from making the next logical step. He couldn’t fail Daniel and condemn him to the mental hospital. Not this time. Not ever again.

As Fraiser nodded, Jack heard a small graveled croak. He looked down at Daniel as the imposter stared back up at him. It was then Jack realized Daniel spoke. The words were chopped and stuttered. They were terrifying.

“The I, the I w-would asssk, the I w-would,” Daniel moaned as he fought to get the words out. “The I would ask you to be the I’s master.” Tears streamed from his eyes, washing the blue in a torrent of pain.

“Jesus,” Jack said. He wanted to jump up, shrink away from his pawing. “Doc?” He glanced up at Fraiser and found she wasn’t at the window anymore.

“The I c-can’t, the I will die,” Daniel begged.

No not Daniel. The thing before him with Daniel’s face wept. The thing climbed up Jack’s legs, took fistfuls of Jack’s shirt and cried out. “The I needs to, the I can’t.” 

In seconds Fraiser and her team entered the room. A fury of activity resulted, none of which Jack processed. His heart throbbed an ugly beat in his chest. It pounded in his ears and deafened him. It thrummed behind his eyes and blinded him. For a moment, Jack thought they would need to get a med team for him.

Through the din, Jack heard Fraiser asking Daniel, “Can you hear me, Daniel?”

Spittle drooled from Daniel’s lips as he crouched on the floor. Fraiser held his face in her hands as she asked, searching his features for an answer. “Daniel, can you hear me?”

The nurses crowded around Fraiser as she knelt beside her patient. They blocked his view of Daniel’s face, but Jack knew it would be blank, lost in the void again. He swallowed back the bile he wanted to vomit, stood and pushed one of the nurses aside.

“No, you’re not doing it right.”

“What?” Fraiser’s dark eyes looked up at him. The fear he felt was written in her expression.

He went over and placed a hand on the crown of Daniel’s head. “Can the I hear us?”

Daniel glanced at Jack as if to get permission, then turned to Fraiser and said, “The I hears you.”

“Colonel?” Fraiser’s voice cracked as she said his title.

“He’s one of them, now. He’s one of those God damned Shadows.”

 

CHAPTER 11

….Note in its entirety from Teal’c to Major Samantha Carter

Major Carter,  
Taken hog. Will return.

Dutifully,  
T 

 

As the motorcycle curved with the road, Teal’c leaned in and smiled. It was his first smile in weeks and the movement of muscles felt foreign and strained. The parasite within his abdomen flipped and curled. It wanted rest, commanded rest. He ignored its twisting and unsettling as he steered the elegant machine through the jagged paths of the Rocky Mountains. The thing inside of him did not understand honor or commitment. It understood only loathing and greed. It did not understand loyalty and family. It only comprehended lust and pain. 

There were times Teal’c possessed a secret thrill at the memory of the parasite being tortured, even though it meant torment for himself. This thing inside of him held him in a constant state of imprisonment. Though it might be a symbiotic relationship at this moment, Teal’c knew it would lash out at him when it grew to maturity. 

The motorcycle was an easy vehicle to navigate and Teal’c enjoyed it. He wondered how Major Carter would react to his note. The reaction of the front gate guard still reverberated in his memory as he rounded another turn in the roadway. A deep chuckle bubbled up and Teal’c suppressed it. It was not dignified for a Jaffa warrior to take pleasure in making one’s subordinates wet their pants. He raised an eyebrow as he reconsidered; maybe it was.

Turning into the driveway, the wheels spat up the stones and scattered them as Teal’c brought the bike to a halt and parked it. He shed the helmet and placed it on the seat, then went up the few steps to the front door. He knocked. He knocked again.

The door swung open and O’Neill regarded him with a puzzled expression. He stepped out of the doorway and surveyed the property.

“I am alone, O’Neill.”

“They let you out?” O’Neill spied around the house to confirm Teal’c’s statement.

“No, they did not. When I left they believed I was in a state of deep kel’nor’reem in my quarters.”

“You were not.”

“No, I was not.” Teal’c pushed past O’Neill and walked into the house, uninvited. His commanding officer followed him without question. The door slowly closed as O’Neill released the knob but did not quite shut it. 

O’Neill rocked back and forth from the balls of his feet to the heels. Teal’c knew this to be a device of O’Neill’s to portray a certain amount of confidence when in fact he felt insecure. If O’Neill was wearing his cap, Teal’c could imagine him adjusting it with one hand on the brim and the other at the back snap.

“So, you’re here.”

“As you already noted, O’Neill.”

O’Neill raised his index finger, stopped his rocking, nodded and then asked, “Drink?”

“Water would be most adequate.”

“Of course it would be,” O’Neill said as he disappeared into the kitchen. 

Teal’c walked the short distance to O’Neill’s living room, and noticed the state of havoc throughout the house. Clothes were strewn across the chairs, empty beer bottles and take out cartons with uneaten foods piled on the tables. There was a most unpleasant odor coming from the kitchen area. 

“Mind if I have a beer?” O’Neill offered the water to Teal’c. He took the glass with a question, but did not drink from it since the glass did not seem to have been cleaned. “What brings you to my humble abode?”

“Is it customary to drink alcohol this early in the morning, O’Neill?”

“It’s five o’clock somewhere my friend, five o’clock somewhere.” O’Neill tossed himself down on the couch and pushed some of the clothes from the seat next to him. “Where are my manners? Sit.”

“I will not, O’Neill.” He placed the dirty glass on the counter and went to stand over O’Neill. “Why are you not at Daniel Jackson’s side?”

His friend, his Commanding Officer leaned forward and bowed his head. The brown bottle of beer hung in his hand. “I can’t, I just can’t.”

“You are his friend, O’Neill, why are you not there to support him.”

“You mean to be his Master?” O’Neill glanced up at him, his eyes both accusatory and pitiful. “I can’t be that for whatever, whoever that is we brought back with us, Teal’c.”

Teal’c sunk onto the cushions of the couch next to O’Neill. “I, too, am much disturbed by Daniel Jackson’s state. I cannot justify what I see with what I know.”

“Neither can I,” O’Neill said and pressed the heel of his hand on his forehead. “Daniel is one of the most brilliant pain in the asses I know. He isn’t that thing we brought home. Did you see him?”

“Yes, I did.” Teal’c’s voice was no more than a simple whisper as he thought on the memories of Daniel Jackson. 

The vitality of the man had been stolen, lost to the Shadows. He no longer stood upright, but crawled on the floor. His back curved in what Teal’c could only assume was a painful contortion. He lapped up his food as an animal, eating from the bowl. It had been Major Carter whom he latched onto when O’Neill refused him. She sat with him for hours as he pawed her and begged her to be his Master. Anytime she tried to leave, he would cry out in distress; his agony both physically apparent as his back stretched and curled and his mental anguish clear as he sobbed for her. She read to him constantly with the hope that he would find his way back to them through knowledge, but even that was starting to fade. Her voice gave out after five days, so now she only sat quietly petting his head as you would a dog.

“You must come back, O’Neill and help Daniel Jackson escape the prison he is in.” Teal’c rose to his feet. “I am not fully healed but I will not abandon my friend.”

“You think that’s what I’m doing, don’t you?” O’Neill stared up at him. “I don’t leave my people behind. I don’t but look at him! What the hell did he do to himself on that planet?”

Teal’c remained silent as O’Neill took to the floor, pacing and gesturing. “Do you know how many times I wanted to leave? He kept on and on. He wanted to stay. He brought that thing into his bedroom with him. His bedroom! What the hell did it do to Daniel? It controlled him. Totally, one hundred percent.”

“You are not angry at Daniel Jackson.”

“What the-.” O’Neill set the beer down and said, “Then tell me oh master of all the is sane in this forsaken galaxy, tell me zen master what am I angry about?”

“I am not a zen master but you have complimented me with this remark.” Teal’c gave short bow, knowing it would irritate an already volatile situation. “You are angry with yourself, O’Neill.”

“Right because I’m the one who got my brain scrambled, got the rest of the team tortured and thrown in prison for five weeks. Yeah, that’s it.” O’Neill made an annoying buzz sound. “Sorry, try again.”

“You are angry with yourself as any commanding officer would be, O’Neill. Daniel Jackson is under your charge. It is your responsibility to ensure his safety. You did not.” Teal’c proceeded. “You failed Daniel Jackson and your team.”

“I failed,” O’Neill murmured then fell back onto the couch. “My friend is dead, Teal’c. Dead. I’ve watched men die before, had them die in my arms. But this, this is unbearable. To see that thing parading around looking like Daniel.” He stopped and shook his head. “I can’t, T. I just can’t.”

“You must O’Neill. You have no choice. Tomorrow, they will try and find a way to bring back Daniel Jackson to us.”

“What?”

“Major Carter and Doctor Fraiser have a theory which may prove most useful, though it could further harm Daniel Jackson and leave him no more than a vegetable.” Teal’c did not remark on how he felt vegetables had nothing to do with the matter at all.

“When are they testing this theory out?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Back to base, then.”

“May I suggest a shower, O’Neill, you smell most unpleasant.”

“Everyone’s a critic,” O’Neill commented and then went to the bathroom to shower.

Teal’c smiled.

 

CHAPTER 12

…..Excerpt Doctor Ana Dupree’s email to Doctor Daniel Jackson left in draft status, never sent

While the culture is fascinating on Pa’chen, I have to admit being back home for these last three days has been a blessing. I understand SGC’s interest in the labs left by Nirriti, but I fear that we will not find what we are looking for. The people of Pa’chen are secretive about their ways. It has taken me so long to convince them that we are a reliable people, that we will not interfere with their Honored Order. To show them the respect I think they need demonstrated, I agreed to an experiment. The Shadows are servants in the society, or that is what I first thought. I agreed to have one assigned me to at all times while I am assigned to their world. The Governor seemed most pleased when I said yes.

Now, I am not sure this was the best thing to do, Daniel. I understand the principles of anthropology, how one must not judge another’s culture based on one’s own cultural mores, but there is something desperately wrong with the Lay/Shadow relationship. I think there might be some kind of psychological relationship. I just don’t know. Since this Shadow servant has been with me on the planet, I am constantly observed, but it is more than that. It is almost as if I am constantly under siege, mentally. It wants in my head. I can’t defend myself against the onslaught. I’m so glad SG1 has agreed to replace SG8 for the negotiations, perhaps I can rest for a while, on Earth, after I’ve gotten you acquainted with the players. 

Just don’t agree to a servant. They aren’t servants, Daniel, they’re something more. They’ll invade you, they’ll take everything you are. Just don’t.

The wind blew across the open plains, the prairie a vast desert like the dust blow from the 1930s. He stood in the middle of the broken lands listening to the din encompassing his senses. He could see little but the bleak landscape around him. He had no idea where he was or what he was. He may have been a person at one time, he thought. 

Yes, he was a man. 

But then the winds howled and the thunderous clouds rolled in the sky warning him of his folly. He had never been a man. He had never been of any consequence at all. He was the wind, he realized. He felt it pick up around him, robbing the breath from his lungs. It battered him breaking away his substance and he collapsed dirt in his mouth and nostrils.

Something stood over him though it held no form or substance. The Shadow moved like a Ghost from Scrooge’s dream or nightmare, it bid him to follow. He clawed his way to his feet. Through the wind, he heard a voice distance and melodious. It spoke words with beauty and wove pictures in his head.

He stopped, listening to the words. It seemed to be speaking in equations and formulas. He smiled. The words, the voice reminded him of someone, of some other life. The Shadow before him beckoned, an angry lanced shifted through his breast and he fell to his hands and knees.

The wind named him, told him his fate. “Daniel is dead.”

He recognized the name, may have understood it as an identification of himself at one time. But knew, he no longer existed as that person. He was a thing now, only a vehicle. The Shadow kicked at him and he scrambled to his feet to follow the commands of his master. The cloaked, yet amorphous form led him through the brambles of the desolate landscape, through the gray and dying trees. There was no life here and he realized this was where he belonged in this hopeless place.

The Shadow sent a warning to him, piercing his heart with a blossom of pain. He stumbled, but did not fall. The pain vibrated out from his heart, filled his vessels and his muscles. It reflected the pressure of the winds around him, closing him off from all else save it.

There were other worlds; he was sure of it. Color existed, painted the world in a riot of alarming hues both beautiful and grotesque. He longed for these colors, a stain of one. But the Shadow told him there were no colors for him. He would only survive in the dead lands around him, imprisoned forever. He followed it outward toward the edge of the lands to the void. There was no other reason except that he didn’t want to be alone. It laughed at him. 

He latched onto the words the Shadow had said. Remembering the name, he thought he may have been Daniel at one time. As he pulled away at the shroud covering his memories, he heard the wind speaking words again to him in soft lilting tones. The words were a story or a prayer. They were both ancient and present in their form. He felt the beauty of the phrases mold within him like a song beating in his breast. Yet the Shadow witnessed his love, his wish and it punished him for the desire to be, for the want to be more than just a thing. 

It came at him like a surge of a tsunami. It shredded him apart, pulling lungs, and muscles and setting nerves on fire. He curled into a ball moaning from the torture, yet knowing he was in one piece. There was no way to escape the pain for the Shadow existed everywhere, even within his very bones.

He commanded that he rise. Faltering, nearly blind from the pain it threw at him, he made it to his feet. He bent over, the pain like a stab wound to his belly. He held onto his abdomen as if it had gutted him and strewn his intestines to the ravaging wind. For once, he saw color. Red smeared over his hands, down his legs from his gut. He pulled his hand away, though no wound was there. The Shadow laughed at him in his confusion. 

He would die. The wounds of his mind would kill him, the Shadow said deep within his brain. He could not beg, the Shadow had stolen his voice, his words. It bent its skeletal finger and told him to follow. 

Even as he listened to the monster leading him, he whispered his name. Daniel. Was he Daniel? Daniel was dead. He followed across the desert and looked back over his shoulder to see the trail of red streaked against the gray soil. Instead of slowing, his blood gushed in rivers from his non-existent wound. He swallowed back bile at the sight of his own blood coloring the landscape. At the Shadows rising from the earth to drink from his blood, imbibing life from him as it slowly drained away. There was no stopping the wounds from spilling over his hands even as he grappled to stop the blood.

The Shadow smiled as he stumbled to his knees, as other Shadows emerged from the dirt of the earth to sink into his flesh to consume his life. It gave him no reprieve, though. Grabbing his collar, it dragged him across the fractured landscape. Stones and branches dug into his skin, puncturing him and giving another place for the things encompassing him to attach onto him like leeches.

The words ruptured through the screaming wind, insistent and strong. The voice changed in its pitch and tone. The words no longer whispered of the beauty of equations or the mystery of life, instead they demanded him to listen. The words warred with the Shadow leading him, tore away at the Shadows slowly drinking his life from his body. 

The winds picked up in a fervor of motion. The words drown out by the hurricane surrounding him. The dust gritted into his eyes and nostrils, choked his lungs. The Shadow yanked him across the barren plains, as the others swam around him, sucking the last of his blood from his body. He could no longer fight it. He would succumb to the Shadow leading him, to the Shadows consuming his blood. 

The Shadow dragging him stopped as he released his hold on hope and life. It turned to him, the shape formed before him, turning into himself, turning into everyone he loved. Beyond it was the void. The landscape broke away to only a shallow black pool that faded into nothingness.

He could not be a Shadow, it said. He was not worthy of being a Shadow or a Master. He was not part of them. He could not be anything. He was nothing and so must became part of the void. Those who could not fit into the Order. His brain tried to hold onto the meaning in these words. He surrendered to them, allowed them access to who he was, though he could not nourish them. His lifeblood was empty and dry. He was only a husk to them with no ability to feed them as the Lay were. They could not use him. His mind was empty to them.

Yet, he knew they had abandoned him long ago. His brain struggled to find them. They had contaminated all that he was and knew. He did not know who this Daniel was. Daniel was dead. All that was left of him was the void.

He welcomed the void.

The words kept singing in his head, promising him something more. He shunned them. He could not understand what they wanted of him. They sliced open his heart, his soul and told him things that could no longer be. The Shadows had emptied him of all that he was. Yet, the words kept winding into him like a snake making offers of wisdom. The words penetrated his brain, seared away the shields. He denied them. 

He staggered to his feet. Glancing back at the wastelands, he said his farewells. The Shadows dissipated. He stepped into the void.

His own words whispered on the dying winds, Daniel is dead.

 

CHAPTER 13

….Excerpt from email from Major Samantha Carter to Doctor Janet Fraiser, dated one week after retrieval 

Thanks, Janet, for asking. I am feeling a bit better, still not sleeping well. I suppose that’s normal, right. Doctor MacKenzie seems to think I may suffer some post traumatic stress. I wanted to laugh when he declared that. Really?  sarcasm there. Of course, I’m stressed! What does he think. I refuse to get into another rant about our favorite psychiatrist. That is not what this email is all about.

I wanted to tell you that I spent some time looking through the field notebook we found hidden in Daniel’s tattered clothes. We were lucky because I’ve been able to recover most of the pages and put together what was happening to Daniel throughout our mission. He kept up the journal for a good number of weeks while he was being held in the lowest rung of the Jajin prison. What he wrote is difficult to read both in content and in construction. This is not a lucid, well Daniel writing in the journal. This is a highly distraught individual close to or during a mental breakdown. 

Janet, promise me, that we will not release Daniel’s field notebook to Mackenzie. I would never forgive myself if he ended up in his hands. I would rather see it destroyed. I understand Daniel is in serious trouble, we have to figure this out on our own.

One of the most interesting passages comes just days after Daniel was confined to the lowest rung. He is in obvious distress, but continues to try and capture his experiences with the Shadows. For example he uses the phrase ‘the Shadows and the Lay somehow are integral to one another, not only as a cultural imperative but also as a physical manifestation’. But then he goes onto write ‘these Shadows imprisoned here seem wrong, broken. I hear a constant buzz, a din of noise. I can’t concentrate sometimes, they surround me all the time. Is the buzzing some kind of mental torture. Sometimes I think it is inside my head, like a constant pressure of wind whipping around me. It feels like the pressure just before a tornado’. 

I’m not sure what any of this means, but I think we need to figure it out, soon. Daniel is almost gone, Janet. I couldn’t stand it, if that happened.

The dark around her felt like a blanket, warm, safe, and perfect to keep a way the chill of life. She cupped her hands around the mug of steaming coffee and tried to ignore the begging of her body for sleep. She didn’t want to sleep, not yet, not while Daniel was trapped. Leaning into the mug, Sam blew on the liquid and smiled. She wondered what Daniel would think of her when he found out that she sat in his office, drinking coffee from his mug. Somehow, it made her feel better about the situation, decreased the feeling of absolute inadequacy. The answers were spread out before her, she was sure.

The papers from Daniel’s field notebook, ripped, torn, shredded laid out on the lab bench before her. She’d pieced them back together, taping the pages with care. She had no idea how Daniel managed to hold onto it between their arrest and his incarceration in the lowest rung of the prison. It was stuffed into a side pocket of Daniel’s ragged pants. It was obvious at some point during his time with the Shadows he had to fight for it from its state. Daniel might be a bit absent minded like the preverbal professor, he was meticulous about his field notebooks. He kept them in pristine condition even off world. 

Sam looked at one page; it was splattered with blood. She hadn’t touched it, but she wondered if it was Daniel’s or a Shadow’s. Did he struggle? Did he get hurt? What had they done to him?

She thought of the husk of a man in the isolation room, and placed the mug down as her hands began to shake. She should go home, try to forget what happened to her, what happened to Daniel. What had happened to Daniel? She shivered. 

Her eyes fell on the words scratched on the pages; the handwriting seemed tortured as if the words had been ripped from his hands. He continually wrote of the Shadows in his head. She followed the lines again ‘get out of my head’. How Daniel? How?

During the last week, Sam sat with Daniel reading to him and trying to reach out to him. He mewled at her feet, a mirage of the man he used to be. He cowered, and crawled never standing his full height. It sickened her to see him so shattered. She had to do something soon. Mackenzie was threatening to commit Daniel. She couldn’t see him in a padded room again, though she realized at some point it might be better for him.

He’d begun using his nails to scrape off the skin from his arms. They’d had to resort to cutting his nails to the quick and when he turned to using the edge of gurney or his teeth to inflict more wounds up and down his arms, they’d had to wrap him in a straight jacket for 36 hours. She cursed as she thought of him, sitting there humming, begging her as his ‘master’ to release him.

Where was the Colonel when they needed him? Damn it. She shuffled the papers around and was about to toss them on the floor when a voice stopped her.

“There you are, Sam.”

She glanced up and saw Janet in the doorway to Daniel’s office. Her voice a whisper, she said, “Hi, Janet.”

“I thought I told you tea with honey, not coffee.” Janet pointed to the mug. 

Sam shrugged. “Daniel didn’t have any.”

Janet considered her and Sam recognized the pattern; Janet going through a silent conversation and abandoning it. Instead, she nodded and slid onto the stool next to Sam. “What’s this?”

Sam started to pile the papers, then respread them out into patterns, dates, times, incidences. “Daniel’s field notebook. We found it in his side pocket of his pants. It was pretty torn up, but I’ve been able to piece most of it back together.” Her finger traced the line of the tape. 

The taped pages were ragged, with holes and open lines where paper was obviously missing. It reminded her of Daniel, how so much of him was missing. Lost.

“Anything of use here?” Janet asked as she flipped through a few of the pages; Sam noticed her fingers traced the lines of Daniel’s handwriting as if she might reach out and touch him through his words on the paper.

“I’m not sure,” Sam said, setting the mug to the side. “Daniel’s writing gets more desperate as the days of his incarceration went by. At first, he tried to continue observing, he tried to communicate with the Shadows. But near the end, he gave up and gave in.”

“Gave in?” Janet asked. “Gave into what?”

“Them, the Shadows.”

“What were they doing to him that he had to give in?” 

Sam focused on Janet, tearing her gaze away from the ever increasing erratic hand writing of Daniel’s journal. “They seemed to be invading his brain, some kind of telepathy or something.”

“Did you observe this?” 

“No, yes, I don’t-.” Sam shook her head, her throat screaming from the pain of talking so she took another sip of the coffee. It was cold and too strong. Cringing, she set it away from her again. “Daniel mentions about them being in his head. He seemed to react to some sort of unspoken attack while we were there before we were arrested.” 

Janet pulled out a throat lozenge for Sam and gave it to her.

“Thanks,” Sam said and quickly unwrapped it. “I just don’t know. Were those Shadows there in the lowest rung to torture people? I don’t get it.”

“You said Daniel mentioned them being in his head?” Janet shifted through the papers after indicating to Sam to take the lozenge for her throat. 

“Here it is.” Sam handed Janet the last entry into the field notebook. “Look at these sections. It says ‘I’ve come to accept that these things, these creatures hold the key to my survival. This ring of prison, this ring of hell is ruled by them. I have no other choice but to let them into my mind, to let them in.’” She turned the page. “He then goes onto say, ‘I should have known there was something far worse Ana couldn’t say, didn’t say. I should have been more vigilant. This society is not a civilization as we understand it. It is more like a parasitic relationship than anything else. But how was I to know that the parasites weren’t the Lay at all? Ana told us, she told us. Stay away from the Shadows…stay away.’” 

“What does it mean?”

Sam pulled another sheet from the pile. “This is an email we retrieved from Ana’s computer. She never sent it. She was adamant about staying away from the Shadows when we were there; she even wanted to warn us before we went.”

“You think Ana died because of what the Shadows did to her,” Janet said as she gaze at the unsent email.

“Yes, and Daniel is suffering the same fate,” Sam said. “But he didn’t fight it like Ana. He let them in.”

“What if, what if letting them in is a normal part of the culture on Pa’chen,” Janet said.

“It must be. Daniel noted it was a relationship of some sort between the Lay and the Shadows.” Sam said. “So what were those Shadows doing on the lowest rung? Why there? To torture?”

“Probably.”

“How? If the Lay and the Shadows are in a psychological relationship normally, that wouldn’t really be a torture, would it?”

“No, you’re right,” Janet said and rubbed her forehead.

“No, no, I’m not,” Sam said. “The Shadows in that rung didn’t have any Lay to connect to. What if that makes them unstable or something. They latch onto anyone, anything and-.”

“And destroy the mind by their inability to control their interactions with the mind prisoner if they themselves are unstable.”

“Exactly,” Sam said, and popped the second lozenge in her mouth. Her throat was burning but she didn’t care; she felt on fire with the possibilities of hope.

“Where does that get us?” Janet asked. “Anywhere? Because I have a very excited Colonel coming back to base expecting us to have some solution.”

Sam nearly toppled off her stool. “What?”

“I asked Teal’c to convince the Colonel to come back to base.”

“You put him up to taking my bike?”

Janet smiled. “Well, I didn’t exactly dissuade him from his plan.”

“And his plan was to lie to the Colonel?”

Janet shook her head. “I told him we figured it out.”

“Janet!” Sam started to lean back, but realized she would surely fall off the back of the stool. She came back to herself. “Okay what do we know?”

“The Shadows have some sort of parasitic telepathic relationship with the Lay. The Shadows of the prison seemed to be unstable.”

“If they are unstable perhaps they tried to bond or whatever with Daniel in an attempt for some normality?” Sam offered.

“Could be.” Janet nodded. “But how does that make Daniel a Shadow?”

“Let me, let me see the last entry again.” Sam took the sheet and stared at it. “Damn, he gave up weeks ago. Janet, he hasn’t been in control of his own mind for weeks.”

“Weeks?”

“If someone was under that kind of mind control for weeks, what would happen?”

“Loss of identity, complete submission. It would be very much like a hostage situation but of the mind,” Janet said.

“Stockholm syndrome?”

“Not really, probably something more,” Janet said. “Daniel would have lost his identity, which I think is more important and it would be replaced by his new normal.”

“The Shadows.”

Janet nodded. “The Shadows.”

“We have to somehow figure out how to reach Daniel. How to get him to understand who he is again.” Sam shifted through the papers. Reading hadn’t help, but what would?

“His immersion into the world of the Shadows was complete during the short time he was there, I’m not sure it’s possible,” Janet said, her voice failing as she spoke.

“Then we have to figure out how to do the same back in his world, our world,” Sam said.

“We don’t have much time,” Janet said. “And I don’t just mean the Colonel. Doctor Mackenzie has put the order in to transfer Daniel to a psychiatric ward.”

“Right,” Sam said. Her voice had given out completely, the hoarse whisper was nearly inaudible. “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

Sam just shook her head and waved for Janet to follow. She went to the elevator and whispered, “This had better work.”

CHAPTER 14

….Excerpt from Daniel Jackson’s personal journals, written at age 21

Sometimes I think about my mother, I think about how she would look now. I wonder if she would be proud of me. I wonder if she would know me now, if I would know her. They’ve been gone for 13 years now. I was just a kid then, still pretty much a handful as I recall. My mother would get so exasperated when I would answer her in a language she didn’t know. I remember her yelling at me once about some minor infraction and I answered her in Russian. She didn’t even realize I had been studying Russian on my own, learned it during the off hours when they were at their digs and I was left to wander around the site. I wanted to challenge myself with something that was difficult, so I chose a language that didn’t use the same alphabet. She froze when I answered her, asked me to repeat it, then called to Dad. He just laughed it off, shaking his head. He asked me, ‘So how many is that Danny?’ and I answered, ‘Nine, if you count dead languages’. 

Do the dead only hear dead languages? Sometimes I speak to them at night when I can’t sleep. Somehow it feels right to use only ancient languages, languages we share but others just don’t know. There are times I dream of them. I’m nearly always grown, but they are still frozen in time – the age they were when they died. So young. Will I dream of them when I am older than they were then? Will they be my parents still, stuck in time?

Better go, time to go defend my doctorate and then start working on my thesis for the next one. I hope they would be proud of me. I’ll tell them tonight, maybe they’re listening.

The wind told stories, stories that whispered of times and memories. Sinking into the void, he heard the winds reach out to him yet the words seemed to dissolve him. He lost all semblance of who he once was or would ever be. The words could not touch him, for the void was made up of the Shadows. 

The colorless world he’d left for the void seemed soothing and exquisite in comparison to what greeted him in the void. Here, within the center of the Shadows, they encompassed his spirit, stripped away his definition until he was what they defined him to be; neither Shadow or Lay – but broken and nothing. 

Even as memories surged forward from the wind, blasting him in the void, they seemed foreign and removed from his identity. He had no identity; the Shadows had told him. He was not Lay. He was not Shadow. He was nothing. He begged for a master and no one offered, no one bonded with him. He peeled away his own flesh, yet even the pain defined nothing. 

The outer world could not offer what he needed. The once familiar faces became like grotesque monsters. He clawed his skin, chewed his arms and wrists, wishing only to transform into the nothing he was inside. He’d watched as the blood smeared across his wrists, as skin, muscle and tendons were torn away. He’d observed as they saved him, as they imprisoned him. 

To become one with the beckoning void, to lose himself completely, he needed to discard the encasement of the flesh. He turned to slamming his head against the concrete floor when they stopped him from his attempts to destroy his flesh through other means.

They tied him, bound him. The void wished for him and he longed to submerse himself into the numbing abyss. The monsters surrounded him and refused to release him. He moaned and pleaded again. They were deaf to his calls. When he finally understood, finally comprehended that even the void was too good for him – a shattered, fragmented, separate thing – he surrendered. He laid in the restraints listening to the din in his head; his only desire to merge with the nothingness of the chasm. But he knew now he was not good enough for it, he was less than even a Shadow or Lay without the other. The Honored Order defined him; he could not be a part of them, though his soul yearned for acceptance. So he waited for death to take him.

The monsters invaded his space. They prodded him to respond and called him by the name ‘Daniel’. He stared into the space between them, wandering, hoping the void would accept him. He still heard the winds of the shadowed lands, and they carried on them words of lost dreams and worlds. He heard stories of a beautiful woman, so lovely she was a gift. He listened to the words as they wove the legend of a man who opened the stars through a gate to the world. He followed the words as they spun the tales of a lost love, dying at the hand of the hero’s protector. The stories ached deep inside his belly, hurt and made him want to reach out.

He would remember his place then, remember the din of the Shadows. Splintered, he deserved less than nothing. As one incapable of merging with another, he was cast off, a lower animal. Silently, he beseeched the Shadows to accept him into the void. But it was then, he realized he had been deceived; the Shadows had abandon him, long ago. They were no longer with him. The void had dissipated. The din called out to him, but with no purpose or hope. He was alone with only the monsters surrounding him.

It was then he screamed out, begging for mercy, for someone to take him back to the Shadows. The monsters refused. They only took him to a small cell, padded and white. He lay spent in the middle of the room. He bit into his arms hard enough to loosen the healing wounds. The monsters responded by wrapping him again. He cried.

There was no way to the Shadows. There never had been. He understood that now. He longed for their mental touch, their addictive cradling of his thoughts, mind and being. Their promise of rewards, or protection echoed in his brain. Without their minds linked with his own, he could no sooner be a Shadow than this Daniel, the monsters named him. 

He sank onto the floor and stared at the white walls. He could not escape his body. Even if he could, the Shadows were no longer waiting for him. It was then he understood. He had not accomplished being a part of the void, but this was a different purgatory. This meaningless white room had become the abyss he desired. He closed his eyes. The Shadows gave him up because of his defect. This is what he was now. This white room was his definition. 

The monsters came and went. They would sit with him and talk to him. Their words reminded him of the stories the winds told. He ignored them. Even their touch stung him and he curled away from them. They tied him to a bed and he lay staring at the ceiling of his box, his abyss. They pricked his skin and poured poison in his veins; he did not respond to their entreaties. 

They told him he was Daniel Jackson. They whispered words that spoke of his life and his desires, dreams and even fears. They grappled to bring him back to them. But he already knew there was no way back.

He was not Daniel Jackson.

He was not a Shadow.

He was the white room. They were monsters, not his friends. They were the calls in the wind making promises, telling him stories he could not rectify within his mind. Even as they tried to pick up the shattered pieces of him, they kept fragmenting him again and again. The stories of Daniel Jackson seemed a distant and vague mystery, a dream he woke up from long ago. The dream was gone and all that waited for him now was death.

CHAPTER 15

Jack hissed as he attempted to let out some of the anger, frustration and outright rage from his roiling arteries. He was sure he would suffer a stroke or a heart attack soon. Carter and Fraiser had not been able to reach Daniel by reading him his own journals and field notebook entries. MacKenzie swooped in and carted Daniel off to a mental institution. The last time Jack saw his friend he was strapped to a bed, lifeless, catatonic, and lost.

A drink of scotch sounded good right about now. He wondered if the General kept any in his office. Licking his lips, he turned back to the Stargate as it sat idly awaiting for the incoming traveler. The chevrons began to glow as the inner ring rotated. Jack glanced over at Carter; her eyes were bruised and red as if she hadn’t slept since the whole damned mission to Gollum world. He knew he couldn’t sleep. Even after too many beers to count and a few shots of his favorite whiskey, Jack still laid awake at night – staring at the ceiling – seeing Daniel in his mind. 

Daniel – did he exist anymore? Or was Daniel just a part of the past like the shadows of his life. Like Charlie. He gulped back the memory of both Charlie and Daniel and shifted to focus on the spinning wheel before him. The code had been accepted after the wormhole was established. Jack folded his arms; he didn’t feel very welcoming. Shit, he felt like pulling a rifle from one of the guards and shooting up the place.

He glanced at Teal’c and wanted to curse. The man was a rock, but one who was going to pay. Jack was fine at home, drinking his way into his next life just fine until Mister – ‘Hear me, O’Neill’ stopped by all dressed up in biker gear. Absently, it occurred to him that Teal’c shouldn’t have biker gear – where the hell did he get it?

As he considered the warrior, the wormhole glimmered and Jacob Carter walked down the ramp. Jack was surprised none of the other Tok’ra saw fit to grace them with their presence. But then, no, he wasn’t surprised. The Tok’ra gave a shit about no one. He regarded Jacob and figured out the man must have changed quite a bit to have a snake in his head.

Jacob hugged his daughter and whispered something that Jack didn’t catch. General Hammond walked up to Jacob and greeted him as did Teal’c.

Jack remained frozen with his arms folded. Before Jacob could reach out a hand to him, Jack said, “Let’s cut to the chase, Jacob, can you help him or not?”

The hard edge of the Air Force came out as Jacob considered him. “Hell. Jack, what do you think I’m doing here? I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t care.”

“I really don’t know, Jacob, you tell me? Does Selmak care? Does he? Do the Tok’ra give a shit?”

“Colonel!” General Hammond said and then added, “Let’s take this conversation up to the conference room.

Even as Jack was about to protest, the warning glare Hammond gave him halted his words. He tightened his lips and shook his head. He gave a wave and everyone started up to the conference room. 

Jack felt the cold icicles solidifying in his veins as they sat around the table, as a video of Daniel was shown. His friend had transformed into a beast, a creature. He grabbed a hold of the coffee mug set at his place at the table and wanted to throw it against the glass. A rumble stopped him and he turned to see Teal’c give a fake cough. He gave Teal’c a half-hearted sneer and turned back to the conversation at hand.

Fraiser had joined them as had MacKenzie in all his shitty glory. Jack twisted his mouth to stop himself from swearing at the doctor. Fraiser reviewed the file, discussing the finer points of Daniel’s condition – it progression from the belief he was a Shadow to a catatonic state. MacKenzie added information regarding the interventions from the readings to the drugs that they used to help Daniel.

“Do you think the healing device would be useful, Dad?” Sam asked. She had her hands folded on the table, close to where her father could reach out and clasp them. He did not touch her, but his hands were also on the table close by as if to lend her some unspoken support.

He shook his head and frowned. “I’m not so sure.” He dropped his head for a moment and then raised it. His voice lowered and Selmak spoke. “The healing device is most properly used as a tool to mend soft tissues and bones. The device also depends highly on the experience of the user with the medical conditions and issues of the patient. If a true diagnosis to what ails Daniel is not defined, it would be difficult for us to heal him with it.”

“A psychological diagnosis is not enough?” Fraiser asked.

“A psychological diagnosis is a statement of the condition the patient is in. Many times it is based on the signs and symptoms of the disease or condition and is not based on physiological state,” Selmak noted. “I cannot heal something where nothing is broken, or torn.”

“Something damn well is broken.” Jack pointed to the stilled video of Daniel on the screen. His friend laid on the bed tied to it, blank eyed and open mouthed. His features identified him as Daniel Jackson but there was nothing of him left. “Look at him, that isn’t Daniel. Something is lost, gone.”

“Are you sure he can be healed at all?” It was Jacob speaking now. “Maybe he’s been completely dissociated?”

“I don’t even know what that means,” Jack said. “All I know is that Daniel was taken to that pit and thrown in with those Shadows and now he’s gone.”

“Okay, let’s stop this and get back to figuring out how to get Doctor Jackson well,” the General said. “Major Carter, can you summarize why you and Doctor Fraiser thought it would be best to bring Doctor Jackson’s personal journals and field notebooks into the equation?”

Carter straightened her shoulders and said, “Yes, sir. From our understanding, the Lay and the Shadow are in a psychological inter-dependent relationship. We believe that without this connection the Shadows, at least, are not stable.”

“The ones on the lowest rung of the Jajin prison had no connection to any Lay as far as we can tell from your observations,” Fraiser noted. “They would be the most damaged, more so if they had been in that state for an extended period of time.”

Nodding, Carter continued, “Our theory was based not only on our observations but on documents from both Daniel and Ana Dupree.” Carter flipped open a file folder. “If they tried to bond with Daniel, first they would have overwhelmed his mind because of the number of Shadows living on the lowest rung.”

“Second, because Daniel is not Lay and is not wired for this interconnectivity,” Fraiser said.  
“So, we figured that Daniel has not been in control of his own thoughts or thought patterns in the weeks he was in the prison. He literally was stripped away from his own identity.”

“Talk about identity theft,” Jack commented.

“Yes,” Carter said. “Without his own thoughts or patterns to latch onto once he was free of the prison, Daniel’s mind was essentially lost. He can’t find his way back because he doesn’t know who he is. He tried to be a Shadow.”

“But that cannot work because Daniel Jackson does not possess the ability to psychologically merge with another as the Shadows and Lay do.”

“Exactly, Teal’c,” she said. “We thought by reading to Daniel about his life he might hear us and understand who he is again.”

“None of the treatments I’ve given him to enhance this line of therapy have helped,” MacKenzie said.

Jack wanted to growl at him, but kept silent.

“What if he can’t hear you?” Jacob asked. “If he is so lost maybe he can’t make out what you’re trying to do.”

“What other choice do we have?” Carter said; Jack saw her plead silently with her father.

“Well.” He sat back but didn’t finish. His eyes glazed as if he was having an internal argument.

“Selmak?” Jack called.

He answered, “Jacob is asking me if we can get a Tok’ra memory device to assist in this endeavor. I am not certain it would help Daniel. I fear it may amplify his last memories of the Shadow and we would completely lose him.”

“Do we have any choice?” Jack asked; he wanted to jump up. He felt Carter nearly vibrating in her chair and Fraiser was frantically shuffling through papers in the file. “We could do this; we could use the memory device and read to him at the same time. Couldn’t that work?”

“It may,” Selmak said, then he bowed his head and Jacob addressed them. “The fact of the matter is; I have no guarantee we can actually obtain a memory device.”

“Son of a-.” Jack started.

Jacob raised his hand and added, “I didn’t say I wouldn’t try. It may take a while.”

“How long does Daniel have?” Carter turned to Fraiser.

She shook her head. “What is happening to Daniel now is akin to being in a vegetative state. Though he still has brain activity he is not responding to outside stimuli at all. He will not feed himself, or move, or respond in any manner. Deterioration of muscle mass and bone integrity as well as general health come into play a lot sooner than people think. And remember, Daniel was in a poor state of health when he was rescued. Malnourished. His kidneys could shut down, he could suffer heart failure. We can feed him intravenously, but it isn’t the same. He is in danger.”

Jack looked to Jacob.

“Then I better be on my way.”

CHAPTER 16

A seizure of images flashed through his existence. Without anchor or definition they attacked him. He grappled to understand what these images, these dreams and nightmares represented in his darkened world. He felt his world contort, shift as if the wave of pain besieging him was amplified and could take shape and form. The pain grasped onto gravity itself and heaved him into the whirlpool of the nightmares, of the images.

Nothing fit. He struggled to swim against the tidal forces but it grabbed hold of him and towed him under into its depths. There was no purchase here. He saw the Shadows beckoning him; he heard the monsters calling to him. Neither defined him. Both offerings were foreign, alien, grotesque to him.

He slid, faltering into the mammoth maw of images as they consumed his mind and devoured him. He yearned for some understanding of the waters about him. There was none. The winds picked up, threw the waves about him in angry torrents. Upon the wind, whispering of other times, he heard stories that narrated the images plaguing his mind. The monsters had changed their tactics, he realized. 

They spoke to him as the winds gave way, as the storms settled and the images slowed. His body went limp as he recalled their voices from before, as they broke him apart from the brotherhood of Shadows. In quiet agony, he listened to them as tears streamed down his face. They told him who he was; they reminded him who he could be. He reached out, crying for his brothers the Shadows, but no one answered. 

They left him alone during the night; let the images echo in his brain as he lay in the middle of the white padded room. They kept him bound by the jacket to watch the promised memories over and again. The images mocked him, and told him the Shadows were his enemies. The words on the winds whispered to him and told him the truth of his life.

He was Daniel Jackson.

He was not a Shadow.

He pitched and fell into the night as he closed his eyes, wishing the images would fade. But they followed him in sleep; they followed him in every waking moment. The monsters surrounded him, battled his barriers, smashed away at his walls. He mourned as they broken down what he was and forced him into the new mold.

Slipping into sleep, he listened to the words as if they were an epic tale told in an alien tongue. His mind followed the patterns, predicted the outcomes. He became the sights and sounds. He could smell the images, feel the sun on his shoulders and upturned face.

The monsters separated him and caused him to question his needs and desires for attachment. They condemned the memories fed to him of the Shadows as he went back to them again and again for succor. The Shadows were his enemies; the Shadows wished to devour him. A part of him reached out, longing for something, someone to hold onto during these nightmares. 

Voices answered him and though he was blind to them, he felt the soft caress of familiarity cover him. The winds died down into a soft zephyr of remembrance. The images cooled and he yearned for them. He recalled the happier moments of childhood; he wept for the moments of that same childhood which would define him later. He felt the loss of parents and his heart ached as if it held a fresh wound. 

Abandonment filled him but the voices stayed with him to guide him through the longest years of loneliness. Memories of a quiet comfort in knowledge and learning give way to the frustration of older years, when life would not be fair and would once again abandon him. 

He remembered the rain. The sheets of rain pounding the pavement overcame every sense. The chill, the dampness came to him as if it had just happened, was just happening. He recalled the car, the face, and the questions. He remembered seeing the instrument of his life’s work for the first time and not knowing what it was. The thrill of translation and discovery sent exhilaration through his thoughts and memories. He stopped to think about it, to realize he uncovered one of the greatest mysterious of his time.

The Stargate.

In moments, the visions of his life wavered and flickered across his field of vision. In a whirl of memories it cascaded back – every moment of triumph, every second of despair until he knew for certain. He comprehended the vehicle of this man’s life. He was the vessel. He was Daniel Jackson.

“Daniel?”

He opened his eyes as he recognized the name as his own. A sweet face encompassed the whole of his visual field. “Janet?”

“Can you tell me your name?” Janet leaned back and Daniel saw Jack hovering near by.

“Daniel Jackson,” he said, his throat felt like he’d eaten a diet of gravel for weeks. He licked his lips but found no saliva. 

Jack reached for the ice chips and offered him a spoonful. It was then Daniel realized he was strapped to the bed, his wrists bound. He squinted, images floated through his mind. A sharp pain jolted through his head and he hissed as he tilted his head.

“Take it easy,” Janet said as she checked him for vitals, even though a number of machines beeped and blurted the readings automatically about him. “You’ve had quite a few weeks. You’ll probably experience some migraines or intense cluster headaches from what we’ve witnessed so far.” 

“So far?” None of this made sense. Where was he? This wasn’t the infirmary of the SGC, the nurses in the background of the large white room slipped in and out without a familiar nod or smile in his direction. “What? What’s going on?” He tugged at the binding and, for the first time, noticed the scars lining his arms. Daniel examined the bit marks, the scabs from tears up and down his skin.

“What’s the last thing you remember, Daniel?”

The question should have been easy, shouldn’t have set the room on a wild angle as words and pictures swam before him. He pitched forward and Jack was there a small bowl under his chin as he vomited. A hand on his shoulder calmed him. As Janet used a wipe to clean his face and Jack gave him a few more ice chips, Daniel asked, “I don’t understand. What’s happened? Where am I?”

He knew who he was, understood his life, but something seemed off like he’d entered a funhouse at a carnival. An image ghosted before him, though it was not in his visual field. He shivered.

“You’re at the hospital,” Janet said but did not indicate the name of the facility. She curled a blanket around his shoulders. “You were injured on a mission. What we can tell is that it caused some psychological damage.”

“A mental hospital?” Daniel asked and inhaled, trying to keep anxiety at bay. “I’m crazy again?”

“Let’s get something straight, Daniel, you’ve never been crazy, a little flaky yes, but not crazy,” Jack corrected.

Daniel shook his head and again a brush of something close whispered over his consciousness. He closed his eyes as he tried to focus on it.

Janet grasped his arm. “Tell us what you’re feeling, Daniel. We’ve tried several times to bring you out of the treatments, but failed.”

None of this made any sense. What treatments? He didn’t recall waking up before in this place or in the infirmary. The last thing he remembered – he stopped as the faces about him transformed, the lights dimmed and the echoes of his imprisonment overcame him.

Janet gave him a little shake. “Daniel, stay with us. Come on, stay with us,” she was saying. “This is how we lost you the last time. Come on, what are you experiencing, tell us?”

He looked away, grimacing as the pain shot through his head. “Faces, faces looking down at me. Voices in my head, loud. It feels crammed.”

“Crammed? What feels crammed?” Janet asked.

He frowned again. “My head, like there are too many people in my head. What’s happening to me?” His body was shaking and a nurse came over to replace the blanket on his shoulders with a heated one. 

“Do you know who the faces are, Daniel?” Jack asked. His arms were folded; he stood with his back straight as if he was at rigid attention.

Tears leaked out of his closed eyes. He groaned as the pain moved through his face and bolted through the back of his head. “The Shadows, I remember.”

“They’re not here, Daniel, you’re free of them,” Jack said as he released his arms, clasped Daniel’s bound hand.

“Feels like they’re still there,” Daniel said, looking away and unable to focus on either of his friends. He felt a need bubble up inside of him not unlike the sensation of his addiction to the sarcophagus. Now wonder, they had him tied down.

“They aren’t,” Janet said. “I assure you. It is an after effect of the treatment we used.” She revealed the memory device. “Jacob brought it. We had you hooked up to this thing for nearly four days straight.”

“At first it didn’t seem to do anything but send you into convulsions,” Jack commented. 

Janet reddened as if she fought back anger. “Not one of my finest moments. But with a little bit of anti-seizure medicine we started again and used it to pull you out of your mental prison.”

“Mental prison?” Daniel asked.

She patted him on his shoulder. “Let’s talk about it a little later. This is the first time you’ve been completely lucid since we stopped the treatment two days ago. You’ve had a few moments here and there but this is a record. I consider this quite an achievement after what you’ve been through, Daniel.”

He only nodded, not sure what type of response she sought. 

“Rest.”

“Can we take these off?” Daniel jerked at the leather straps holding his arms down. 

She glanced at Jack before she answered. “Sure.”

Both Jack and Janet unbound his wrists and ankles. Daniel collapsed back into the cushions. Janet took his chart and made a few comments before telling him once again to sleep. She left the room. Jack bounced back and forth on his feet as if he didn’t know if he should linger.

“I’ll be-.” Jack pointed to the door. “I should go.”

Daniel gazed at a loose thread in the sheet as he said, “Can you stay, just for a while?” He glanced up at Jack, willing him to stay.

Jack considered him, the hospital room, the scurrying nurses and finally said, “Why not.”

Daniel gave a weak smile as Jack settled in a chair next to his bed. Daniel looked at him, then rested back into the pillow and closed his eyes. The whispers erupted like an explosion of insect noises. He turned his head and opened his eyes to watch Jack as he lounged back in the chair. 

He curled his fists into the sheet, fighting to stop the words from bursting from his mouth. He gulped them back, forcing silence. Yet he could not stop the constant mantra repeated over and again in his head.

Master, master. The I’s master, the I’s master.

 

CHAPTER 17

……Notes from the Goa’uld Nirriti’s laboratory on the Pa’chen experiment

While the genetic manipulations of this population have been successful there have been several issues that were unpredictable at the time of conception of this project. First was the Missing Twin Syndrome or MTS. Occasionally, the twin is lost in utero and therefore either the Lay or the Shadow (the vernacular terms) is lost. This leads to a very unstable infant. The infant should be terminated immediately and should not be permitted to grow to adulthood. If adulthood is attained, the singleton will be condemned to a life of madness and could contaminate the entire neural network I have worked so hard to attain. The second outcome was the Lost of Twin Syndrome or LTS. This is a condition where during the different stages of life, one of the twins is lost to death. At any stage, LTS must be taken care of swiftly. To leave an unconnected Lay or Shadow as an adult is to introduce a madness strain within the entire network as well. 

During the writing of the High Order of Pa’chen, I have included a small allowance of MTS and LTS. By permitting a few surviving Shadows, this will allow me collect a number of these genetic mutations further experimentation. These will be confined to the lowest rung of the Ja’jin prison. I have noted in my observations, thus far, that exposure to their chaotic minds by unchanged humans (test subject) leads to madness of the test subject. There is very little I can do to reverse these effects. The test subject becomes catatonic in the pit with the Shadows. When removed from the Shadows, it thinks it is a Shadow for some time and then realizing it cannot bond with any other unchanged humans it becomes unresponsive again and eventually dies. I have experimented with allowing the test subject to be with Shadow-Lay pairing. The results have not been favorable, which is unfortunate. I must strengthen the neural network of the Shadow-Lay pairing to include unchanged humans. If this can be accomplished, I will have yet another way to increase the worshippers under my command….

Daniel leaned back into the pillows of the bed, the comfortable sounds of the infirmary echoing in his head, causing the pulsations of the headache to amplify. The headache was constant now; he had no idea why they called them cluster headaches since they never seemed to end. He couldn’t even tolerate his glasses anymore. He frowned and brought his eyebrows together. God, when was the pain going to go away?

They moved him from the hospital to the infirmary two days ago. The ambulance ride had been surreal as the lights flashed and Janet bent over him. He didn’t understand why they needed to use a rescue vehicle or the lights and sirens until he went into a full blown seizure. The after effects of using the memory device for four days straight had continued to plague him. They hadn’t been prepared for him to have a seizure in the ambulance, nor had they been prepared for the series of seizures that took place as he arrived at the Mountain. 

It was a little over 24 hours since he had convulsed and Janet seemed pleased that she’d found the right medication for him, though she evaded the question regarding the permanence of his current condition. With a seizure condition, Daniel was certain he would never been allowed gate travel again. He shook his head; that was the least of his worries.

A bag of books sat on the table next to him, a gift from Sam. She visited him both in the mornings and in the evenings with a few books, a few cookies and bright conversation. He glimpsed the whisper of exhaustion still about her, as if the memories of Pa’chen followed her. Both Jack and Teal’c made their daily appearances. Teal’c looked stronger, more like his stable unmovable self. 

Then there was Jack.

Daniel couldn’t think of Jack. The words Master drifted into his consciousness again. The compulsion ate at him, making him fidget and shift. He chewed on the inside of his mouth as he choked down the need to call out to Jack, to call out to his Master. 

As if on cue, Jack entered the infirmary and headed straight toward Daniel’s corner. Since he was confined to the infirmary for the next few days, Janet had ordered he would have some privacy in the back corner of the room. 

With hands in his pockets, Jack stepped to the side of Daniel’s bed. He lifted his chin to the pile of books. “Doing a little light reading?”

Master, Master, Master.

Daniel fisted his hands in the sheet, trying not to reach out to touch Jack. He shook his head and gave a small chuckle, trying to lighten his own mood. “Sam is over doing it a bit. You know, trying to get me back in the swing of things.”

“Always the over achiever,” Jack commented, then pulled a stool over and spun it before sitting down. “The doc says no seizures for a whole day.”

Daniel nodded but avoided looking directly at Jack. “Yeah, I-.” He stopped, the compulsion overwhelmed him. He tried again. “The meds, the meds seem to be the right ones.”

Master, Master, Master.

If Jack noticed the stumble to Daniel’s answer he didn’t remark on it. “That’s good news. A few weeks of meds, maybe some cooling down time and we’re all back at it again.”

“Maybe,” Daniel said. He had to look at Jack; his pulse throbbed in his temples as he denied himself. “Janet seemed pleased.” He relented and glanced up at Jack; the wash of pleasure blossomed first in his chest and spread out through his entire body. It warmed and stirred something deep inside at the same time. It triggered the need to reach out to Jack. He hadn’t known his hand moved until Jack jumped from the stool to reach him.

Jack grabbed hold of Daniel’s outstretched hand and held it. “You’re cold,” Jack said as he clasped his hand.

Daniel swallowed. This was good, he could handle this. But Jack broke off the contact and walked over to a nurse asking for another blanket for Daniel. He started to shiver as if to confirm Jack’s assertion yet Daniel knew it wasn’t due to the cold, the temperature. It was his need, the addiction. If he couldn’t get into Jack’s head, then he would settle for touching him, being near him.

Master, Master, Master. 

“Jack,” he called out and heard the desperation in his own tone. 

Jack whipped around and raced to his side. “Jesus, Daniel, I thought something was wrong.” Perspiration dripped down Daniel’s face as he held in the need as the desire washed over him. “What the hell?” Jack touched his forehead and the pounding of Daniel’s heart settled a degree. The hand slipped away. “You’re freezing cold but you’re sweating. Are you okay?”

“Must be the meds,” Daniel said, his words forced and false in their tone. A nurse came over and offered him a blanket. He took it but purposefully had trouble opening it and laying it over his shoulders so that Jack would help him, would touch him. He sighed as Jack wrapped it around him.

“Better?” 

He only nodded. 

“I think we should talk to the doc about your meds,” Jack said as he eased away from Daniel. “You can’t be going through this all the time.”

“Through what?” Janet said as she approached the corner of the infirmary, her heels clicking all the way. Her smile was bright, her eyes gleaming. Daniel wished she would go away, leave him alone with Jack. 

Master, Master, Master.

“He’s sweating like a pig, but freezing to the touch,” Jack said and grabbed a hold of Daniel’s hand. Janet touched Daniel but he yanked away from her.

“I’m not a science project,” Daniel snapped.

“That’s a little bit of our Doctor Jackson back again.” Janet flipped open the chart and shook her head. “You know, those side effects are not normal for your meds. Let me check with the reports and see if there are any after marketing side effects reported.” She slipped the chart back on its hook and gave Daniel a little squeeze before she left. “Dinner will be here soon. I took the opportunity to order your favorite.”

Daniel raised his hand but closed his eyes as she left. A murmur of thank you left his lips. He rubbed at his eyes; he wished for his glasses. He wished the pain would go away.

“You want me to leave?”

“No,” Daniel said a little too quickly. “Just, I – I’ve been alone most of the day. I can’t really tolerate the books; reading makes the headaches worse. Do you mind staying for a while?” 

“Sure thing.”

Jack remained with Daniel until his dinner arrived, but excused himself once they set the tray on the table next to him. Daniel shook as he stared down at the food. It started to cool as he attempted to calm his nerves, as he called out mentally over and again - Master, Master, Master. He picked up the fork and played with the food. He couldn’t even see what it was, didn’t even recognize it. Was it his favorite? His stomach turned as soon as he took a bite and he pulled the small kidney shaped bowl over and vomited. 

He shoved the food away and lay back on the bed. His eyes burned as he held back the pain expanding in his chest. It felt like someone fisted a hand around his heart, constricting it, pulverizing it. He closed his eyes and reached back in his memories, feeling the sensation of the Shadows. It comforted him, soothed him. It felt right.

The steps did not even disturb him, though he knew someone stood by the side of his bed. He floated on the memories, letting them wash over him like small tides. 

“Doctor Jackson?”

Daniel opened his eyes to see Doctor Mackenzie with his hands in his lab coat pockets studying him. He felt like a school boy caught cheating on his test. He noticed he was panting, his palms wet with sweat as he addressed the doctor.

“I need your help.”

 

CHAPTER 18

……Excerpt from the Journal of John Doe, present day

I miss them. My memories, I miss my memories. The doctor says they will come back, eventually. The traumatic brain injury I received in the accident (which by the way I do not recall at all – I don’t even know what kind of accident it actually was) caused the amnesia. 

I want to leave the hospital. I want to leave this little room. All I see is this room, the doctor’s office and the hallways between the two. I have some books, but none of them are interesting to me. I keep paging through them trying to find out why the doctor would give me books on topics like the history of baseball or the joys of comic book collecting. He doesn’t tell me much; he says I have to discover who I am. But how? I asked yesterday during our session if I could at least go back to the scene of the accident to see if I remember anything. He told me he would consult with his partners. I have a feeling the answer will be no.

He doesn’t know I’m writing this journal. He doesn’t know about the dreams I have. The dreams are images that make no sense to me. I think I may have been in the military at one time. Yet the missions, or what I think must be mission are filled with monsters and fire. I wonder if it is just an illusion, a creation of the injury still plaguing my brain. Snakes curl around my brain, eat at everything that is precious to me. Why? 

They call me John. But that is not my name. Is it Jonathon? Is it Johnny? Is it Jack? Jack seems familiar and I’ve asked the doctor to call me Jack and he just laughs. He tells me that John Doe is not my name, that we will discover my real name in due time. I think he knows who I am. I think he has designed this charade.

I hide in the bathroom to make sure he can’t see me writing these entries. There is a camera watching me in the room all the time. I hate it. He says it is to make sure I’m safe. Why wouldn’t I be safe? Sometimes, sometimes, after our sessions together – I remember less. I started writing this journal to compare my memories before our sessions and then after our sessions. It is clear. The doctor is taking my memories away from me.

Why?

Son of a bitch, Jack thought as he walked into the briefing room. He wasn’t the first in the room, and he stopped as he saw the assembled; General Hammond, Doctor Fraiser, Carter, Teal’c and the a-hole Mackenzie. Mackenzie was standing in the middle of the crowd; his hands covering a folder. Carter looked like she’d just lost her puppy, while Teal’c glared at the psychiatrist with a look that could literally kill a few Goa’uld. 

“Where the hell is Daniel?” Jack said as he pulled out a chair and sat down. He was the only one sitting and paradoxically, it brought a position of power to him.

“Daniel has been suffering,” Fraiser started but she stopped as if the words were stuck in her throat. She glanced to the General for assistance.

“First, I want to assure you that the doctors had Doctor Jackson’s best interests in mind when they decided on this course of treatment,” the General said. 

“What course of treatment? Where is Daniel?”

“Gone,” Carter said and Teal’c was at her side, helping her sit in a chair. She didn’t look like she’d lost her puppy; she looked like she’d watched someone eat her puppy, alive.

“What the hell is going on here?” Jack asked.

“Doctor Jackson asked me to help him,” Mackenzie said. “And I did.”

“Which means?”

“Daniel was suffering from all the same symptoms of a deep psychological addiction,” Fraiser said, her voice shaking as she spoke. “There are several different types of addiction. From what we can discern, the Pa’chen culture is based on the most complex where there is both a psychological addiction and a physiological addiction.” Fraiser swallowed; then waited for Jack to interrupt. When he did not, she continued. “What we believed happened with Daniel is the psychological connection led to the portion of a psychological addiction.”

None of this made sense. They cured Daniel, didn’t they? He was fine. Jack saw it himself. Daniel had been talking normally, interacting with them normally. What was going on? The Tok’ra memory device worked, hadn’t it?

“None of this is tracking,” Jack commented.

“Daniel confessed to me that he was having constant thoughts and compulsions to have a ‘master’.” Mackenzie opened up the file and pulled out a few notes. “Especially when he was in the company of those closest to him. He mentioned you, Colonel.”

“This is a load of crap,” Jack said, his fists tightening. “Daniel never acted as if he was one of those, those things. He was fine. He had no problem at all talking with me. Everything, he was fine.”

“You have to understand,” Mackenzie spoke. “Daniel didn’t want to upset any of you. He felt as if his failure on the planet caused too much stress and pain for his team. He didn’t want to bring this forward to anyone. He wanted to deal with it on his own.”

“And dealing with it meant that you take Daniel away,” Jack said as he stood up. “No, I want to know where he is, if he’s safe.”

“We thought you might be concerned, so we set up a video feed for you.” Mackenzie nodded to Fraiser and she went to the monitor and tapped it on. A few more strokes on the keyboard brought up an image of a small hospital room.

The room was simply designed with a bed, a dresser and a window with bars on it. In black and white, the image showed a person lying on the bed. The door to the room had a coded lock on it. The person shifted and Jack recognized Daniel as he sat up. He rocked in the dim room as his hands went to his head. He tore at his hair and he whispered over and again. At first, Jack couldn’t make out what Daniel whispered, but it became clear as the words became louder and louder.

“Master, master, master,” he cried out. He dropped to the bed and flung an arm over his eyes. “Please stop it, stop it.” 

The feed continued for several minutes with Daniel oscillating between rocking on the bed, pacing the room and curling on the bed to try and settle himself. After a few minutes, Fraiser paused the feed and turned to the group. 

“Daniel has undergone hypnosis to erase all of his memories. What you’re seeing here is the first few hours before he underwent the hypnosis therapy.” Janet bowed her head. “He continued begging for a master until after the treatment. At this time, Daniel believes he has a traumatic brain injury which has resulted in amnesia.”

“So, he has none of his memories now?” Carter asked, her hands were folded on the table but Jack noted how the knuckles whitened with tension.

“That is correct,” Janet said. “He doesn’t even know his name. We’re keeping him from recalling anything at this time to make his psyche does not access the memories of Pa’chen.”

“But why all of his memories?” Jack asked. “Why take him completely away from the people who care about him.”

“He’s addicted to the need for a master. Right now, his needs, desires are focused on SG1, especially you Colonel,” Mackenzie said. “It is like any drug or addiction. We must take away the source of the addiction in order to break the cycle.”

“But with drugs or alcohol, even having a taste of those forbidden agents can lead to the addictive behavior again,” Carter pointed out. “Does this mean Daniel will never be able to see us again?”

With her hands in her labcoat pockets, Janet gave a great sigh and said, “We don’t know. Right now, Daniel must stay away from everyone he’s close to.”

“And fight this thing alone?” Jack said. The memory of Daniel breaking apart in a supply closet with a gun came to him. He recalled how fragile and shattered Daniel’s mind was during the addiction withdrawal. Now, he had to face this therapy alone, because his own team represented the worse kind of addiction. “Where is Daniel?”

“Colonel, I’ve asked the doctors not to reveal that information,” the General said. “Doctor Jackson needs time and privacy to recover from his illness. He is in good hands.”

“Will we be able to review Daniel Jackson’s state and condition regularly?” Teal’c asked.

“We will send a video feed from Daniel’s room periodically so that you can see his progress,” Janet said.

“What other therapy are you trying with Daniel?” Carter asked.

There was silence in the room then Janet cleared her throat and said, “We haven’t tried anything other than the hypnosis at this time. We have considered bringing down the wall we’ve constructed and trying some negative feedback therapy.”

“What exactly does that mean?”

“It means we bring back Daniel’s memories and then when he has these thoughts or expresses inappropriate desires or needs, a negative response would occur,” Mackenzie admitted. He fiddled with his papers but didn’t look up at the rest of the members of SG1.  
“Negative response?” Jack said. “How come that just doesn’t sound good to me?”

“It could be something as simple as a privilege taken away,” Mackenzie replied but kept his eyes down.

“But probably something worse,” Jack said through clenched teeth.

Mackenzie nodded. After a moment’s pause, he added, “We hope it won’t come to that, but in order to treat Daniel we need to take whatever avenues are afforded to us.”

“Even torture?” 

Carter looked away, her face paled with Jack’s statement.

“It wouldn’t be torture, sir,” Fraiser said in low tones.

“But it wouldn’t be pleasant.”

“No, sir, it won’t.”

Jack looked at the still figure on the monitor. He closed his eyes and couldn’t help but remember the tortured look on Daniel as he suffered through his sarcophagus addiction withdrawal. Daniel was a strong man, his mind not one easily molded. Jack knew then the hypnosis would never work and the only way to get his friend back would be to further torment him, He cursed and looked at his friend’s figure, alone in a room with bars on the window.

 

CHAPTER 19

….Excerpt of an email sent to General George Hammond from Colonel Jack O’Neill – three months after the hospitalization of Doctor Daniel Jackson 

George,   
I have no idea how I am supposed to react to this latest garbage from the king of garbage information himself, Mackenzie. I get it that Daniel asked the Big Mac to help him; we all saw the footage, but this is too much. After weeks of no communications just a fuzzy video feed showing us Daniel sitting on the bed, or Daniel sleeping or eating, we get to send video messages to Daniel. Talk about throwing us a bone! Carter cried through the first three she sent, I just cursed and stared. Thank God for the T-man. At least, he talked to Daniel like he is a normal human being, like he is our team mate, our friend. 

After that charade or experiment (whatever the hell I am supposed to call it), Big Mac wants us all to visit Daniel – on his terms. By this point, you know we were all chopping at the bit to see Daniel. But we weren’t allowed to talk to him alone. He was like a squirrel being chased by a rabid dog. Did you see some of the video feed? He couldn’t sit still; he kept wringing his hands, and then that jerky motion he kept at – what the hell was that? I asked Big Mac about it, you know. Guess what he said? Daniel had been subjected to the negative feedback therapy, that the jerky motion was due to his need to inflict PAIN on himself. P-A-I-N, George. What the hell kind of doctors do we have in the military, anyway? 

I talked to Fraiser about it. She promised me something would be done. Now, its three months, and Big Mac says Daniel is ready to visit the SGC. Do we believe him? Or is Daniel going to start smacking himself in the head or something each and every time he thinks something a little off. Because you know that Daniel thinks weird things all the time! I just don’t trust we are getting the same Daniel back, George. You tell me…..

Mackenzie stood by his side as they rode the elevator into the depths of the Mountain. Daniel straightened his shoulders again and pulled the cuffs of his off white sweater down around his hands. He felt like a high school teen going to ask a girl out to the prom, which was strange because Daniel never went to his high school dances. Mackenzie touched his arm and looked at him as if to inquire on his state. Daniel only nodded; he wasn’t sure words would actually make it out of his mouth.

He clenched his teeth to keep them from chattering. He wasn’t cold, but nervous, terrified even. What if his team rejected him? They had every right to hate him, to blame him for what happened on Pa’chen. He’d allowed that Shadow – he still couldn’t bring himself to think the name – into his head. What for? He still couldn’t answer the question, though Mackenzie tried everything in the book to help him recover the reason. He licked his dry lips and fisted his hands as the elevator opened.

Mackenzie gestured for him to exit the lift first, and Daniel did with some confidence. He reminded himself this was his place of work; generally people liked him here. He was respected and worthy. 

What was worth and value without validation? He closed his mind to the question, but made a mental note of his slip. Mackenzie tilted his head as if he’d read his mind.

“Okay, I’m fine,” Daniel said.

“You’re sure you’re ready for this? It is a big step, Daniel.” Mackenzie said as they stopped in the hallway outside the briefing room. 

Daniel swallowed but it did little to calm his nerves. His heart struck in fast beats in his chest and it caused his lungs to pull in what seemed to be useless air. He felt a void open up in his chest. He nodded and said, “I’m ready. Just a little slip up.”

“Good, good,” Mackenzie said. “It’s wonderful that you’re being honest with yourself and with me, Daniel. This is a great step forward.”

Daniel said nothing but thought of the pages and pages of a journal by John Doe. He remembered the fury of the doctor when the writings were discovered. Mackenzie had broken down that day, had sent for the orderlies, had turned off the video feed. Daniel wiped his hands on his pants. From that day forward, the charade was off. John Doe disappeared to be replaced by Daniel Jackson.

Daniel Jackson, a pitiful creature…he stopped as the thought was framed in his head. He shifted his gaze to MacKenzie then the floor.

“Another one, Daniel?”

Daniel felt the burn of tears in his eyes as he confirmed the reality of the situation.

“Maybe you’re not ready?”

“No, I want to try. You said I have to try, right?” Daniel blinked away the moisture and gathered himself to walk into the briefing room.

“Yes, Daniel, I did.”

Together, they walked into the briefing room.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*part 2~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

It was evening by the time they returned to the hospital. Daniel slumped on his bed and didn’t fight Mackenzie’s orders that a sedative be prescribed for him. He wanted to forget the day, but first he needed to complete the day. He took the small wrist bands out of the drawer near the bed. He held a remote control in his left hand. He slipped on the wrist bands as the orderly brought in a tray of food. Daniel thanked him and the man left. Pushing the food aside, Daniel laid back on the pillow and let his mind wander freely.

The relief filled him, to at last allow his mind to open and accept all thoughts. It was easy to let his mind drift to its lowest point. He’d fought the swirl, the pull of the raging whirlpool all day. As he sank into the depths, his mind brought up images of his team. He recalled walking into the briefing room, saying hello to Jack, giving Sam a tight hug and nodding to Teal’c. They drank coffee and ate cookies Sam had baked herself. They discussed the latest work at the SGC. SG1 as a unit had not been back in the field since Pa’chen. This surprised Daniel and he mentioned it. He saw the hard lines cross Jack’s features. When he quizzed Jack about it, his friend had confessed. While members of SG1 would accompany other teams on missions, SG1 was not whole without Daniel. They would wait until Daniel was ready to come back before embarking on missions again. The General had agreed to the strategy, noting that his premier team needed time to decompress and heal from the experiences on Pa’chen.

Daniel apologized. He recalled how difficult it was to look at his team mates as he spoke the words like a revered prayer. It had been his fault; he’d invited the Shadow into his head without even realizing it. His own curiosity failed him and caused the team great suffering. Sam grasped his hand, then. The tears formed in her eyes as she told him there was nothing to forgive. They were a team, a family and always would be. 

Jack remained quiet but Daniel read his expression. His friend was conflicted. Daniel nodded and told Jack it was okay. He could blame Daniel, after all Daniel blamed himself. Jack went on a tirade then. He lectured about chain of command, who was in charge in the field, protection of the civilian. Daniel listened and it was music to his ears. 

As the memory replayed in his head, Daniel gripped the remote control to the wrist bands in his hand and squeezed it. The wrist bands set a jolt through him. It burned, and the pain fired up his nerves in his arms. He thought of Jack and allowed himself to whisper words – whisper master in his head. Each time he said it, he clenched the remote. Each time he touched the button on the remote, a searing pain flared up his arms. Each time the duration was longer, more intense. The pain grew and he cried out, yet his mind cycled back to his team, their needs, his needs.

He relaxed further into his thoughts as the doctor had taught him. Daniel allowed the wall to break down, welcomed the forbidden feelings and desires to overwhelm him. His hand remained in a tight fist and the bolts of electric shocks slammed through him until he felt the seizure overtake him. Once it came, he fell into darkness.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~part 3*~*~*~*~*~*~*

…..Excerpt Daniel Jackson’s personal journal….six months after his initial admittance to the hospital

I am finally being released. I cannot believe what a nightmare this has been. I cannot believe how loyal my team has been. They’ve visited me nearly every day once Mackenzie (or as Jack likes to call him, Big Mac) said I was ready. Since I was gone for so long, I assumed they would get a replacement for me on the team. Jack would have none of that! Sure they went on a number of missions, but they went along with other teams. (Evidently, Washington and Kinsey were not happy about this fact – somehow the General was able to smooth things over). 

I am allowed light duties under the watchful eye of Janet. Big Mac told me he believes the first few days will be rough; that I may need to fall back to using the wrist bands. As long as it isn’t too serious, he thinks I should transition to just needing psychotherapy once a week. The doctors even believe I may be allowed gate travel in a few weeks or a couple of months. When I heard this, I nearly jumped out of my skin. I was certain they would permanently forbid gate travel for me. Big Mac came through this time. He reported that since the alien intrusion in my mind could be considered similar to Jolinar’s possession of Sam, he could not – in good conscience – forbid me gate travel. This is great. I cannot wait to see my team again, hoist on that impossibly heavy back pack and step through the wormhole.

Daniel sat in his laboratory; all the familiar things surrounded him like a comforting blanket. Instead of studying his artifacts, finding peace in what he loved to do, he sat staring in his desk drawer – where he kept the wrist bands.

His team had given him a royal welcome. Sam brought baked goods, Teal’c handed him six month’s worth of supermarket magazine on alien sightings, and Jack invited him over for pizza and beer tonight. It was good, cordial, but awkward and unpleasant. He rubbed his hands together, trying to remove the sweat and the feeling of disillusionment. He’d been so excited for this day, when everything would return to normal. But what was normal now? His team had been tortured because of him. He’d turned into a major league head case. He’d turned their lives upside down. Why did he expect them to treat him the same?

“Daniel?” Jack stood in the door way. The light in the hallway back lit Jack and his form was only in silhouette. 

Startled, he slammed the drawer closed and said, “Yes?”

“You doing all right?” Jack didn’t move into the laboratory.

“Fine, I’m fine.” Daniel stood and started to pick up artifacts and place them in different spots. He wasn’t sure exactly what the hell he was doing.

“Now that sounds like the old Daniel I knew.” Jack walked into the room, pausing at the lab bench.

“Does it?” He hated that he was looking for confirmation, but the fear bubbled up that he would never really know himself again. 

“Now, that doesn’t,” Jack said and leaned on the table. He picked up a pottery bowl and spun it around a few times.

Daniel caught it and hissed at Jack. “Thousand year old pot, Jack. Have some respect.”

“Old Daniel, again,” Jack said.

“Are you keeping score?” Daniel moved to place the pot on an upper shelf where prying hands would not touch it.

“Someone has too, since you don’t know who you are anymore,” Jack said.

“Says who?” Daniel asked and picked up several other artifacts in Jack’s reach and placed them on a separate table.

“Me.”

“And you’re the expert on who Daniel Jackson is?”

“Someone has to be,” Jack said and stood up straight, placing his hands in his pockets. “Listen, Daniel, I get that you been through a lot. I get you blame yourself for everything that happened on Pa’crap.”

Daniel remained with his back toward Jack. He stared at the little table with the strange carvings and artifacts from other worlds spread out on it. Only Jack would be so blatant, only Jack could truly help him. He despised that every thought now was questioned; was it him or a shadow of someone, something else?

“After Charlie,” Jack stopped, paused then started again. “After he died, I didn’t know who I was anymore. I lost all sense of me. Go ask Sara. Just like you, I blamed myself.” 

Daniel didn’t reply, didn’t face Jack. He held tight to the words, wrapped them around himself as if a sacred cloak of protection. This is what he needed, should he be punished for it? Should he be an outcast for his needs? Was he a monster or was he Daniel Jackson?

“I know it isn’t the same, that it can’t possibly be the same considering what that world did to us, to you,” Jack said. “But I found a way back. You will, too. We all will.”

Daniel pinched the bridge of his nose, then dropped his hand and turned. “Pizza and beer tonight?”

Jack smiled. “You got that right. How about seven?”

“Seven thirty?” Daniel said. “I have some errands to do after work.”

“Sure thing,” Jack said, gave a fake salute and left the laboratory.

Collapsing in his chair, Daniel opened the drawer and pulled out the wrist bands. He shoved them into his pockets. His heart raced, the drum of it deafened him. He looked at his watch. If he arrived home by five thirty, he could get in at least an hour of therapy. 

Were his thoughts from a possessed creature or were his thoughts from Daniel Jackson? He shut his eyes and pressed his fingernails into his palms. If he questioned his thoughts, he had to assume they were wrong, distorted, and disturbing.

“Five thirty, six thirty, that’s an hour. An hour should be enough, right?” he asked himself. His hands shook. He could see Jack tonight, eat, watch the game, and argue. Therapy would take the questions away, take away the addiction. He needed the therapy; he desired the pain. His whole body seemed to vibrate.

He grabbed his jacket and headed out of the Mountain toward home. 

It was only three o’clock.

THE END.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I am ending it there. Daniel addicted to pain and punishment. There is a sequel, but it is gruesome and so I decided not to place it as part of this story – since some people might not be interested in reading horror. Thank you for reading.


End file.
